Black Clover
by Inukocharm
Summary: Jack's lifelong dream has been to study the RileyBijou Grand Hotel, the most haunted hotel in the world. And unfortunately for Danny, Jack's fondest wish has just come true...
1. Prologue: Once Upon a Time in Hollywood

A/N: In my first DP fan fiction, _The Talk_, Jack missed a special on the Riley-Bijou Hotel, supposedly _the_ most haunted hotel in the world. So, after a year of thinking and imagining, I've decided to throw the Fentons in there and see if Jack is still as enthusiastic about the place. Please read, review, and enjoy!

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Black Clover

By Inukocharm

Prologue: Once upon a time, in the Golden Age of Hollywood…

The Riley-Bijou Grand Hotel was the place to be and be seen. Movie stars, royalty, politicians, and innumerable masses of commoner folks willing to pay for the privilege battled for the right to stay in the thirteen-story, suite-only luxury hotel. Despite rumors of strange happenings and suggestions that the place was haunted---and it very likely was, as its history was as bloody as the Tower of London's---people couldn't get enough of the place. And at the very top of the hotel lay the crown jewel of old Hollywood---the legendary nightclub, Club 1313. For nearly thirty years, Club 1313 hosted not only the greatest talent Hollywood and New York could offer, but proudly displayed its own legendary lineup of spectacular stars. From swing-and-jazz pioneer Beau 'Bonjangles' Jennings, to honey-voiced comedienne Sophie Lynn Barker, Club 1313 boasted magnificent talent that all the money in Hollywood and New York couldn't buy.

Perhaps Club 1313's most legendary---and most tragic---stars were the immeasurably talented and stunningly beautiful Black Clover Sisters. Twin sisters Bella and Donna powers sang, danced, performed comedic skits, and traded witty banter with their fellow stars. Soft-spoken Donna was absolutely angelic, always kind and polite and properly dressed in the latest fashion. Smoky-voiced Bella was the wilder of the two, always earning surprised gasps with her risqué comments and even more risqué outfits. Despite being as different as night and day, the sisters were as close as any siblings could be and worked surprisingly well together, and always made sure that emcee Alfie Gregory alternated their names when introducing them.

But one night, all of that changed.

It was around three a.m., and there was a lightning storm going on outside. The hotel proper was closed. Club 1313, however, was just reaching its nightly climax. The Black Clover Sisters were the next act; strangely, however, Donna was nowhere to be found. Worried, Bella asked Alfie to stall with the other acts while she went to look for her sister. When she couldn't find Donna anywhere in the club, Bella decided to go down to the main lobby. She took the service elevator.

A few minutes later, the power went out, and the sound of a spectacular crash was heard throughout the hotel. The hotel owner and the stars rushed down the emergency stairs to the basement to get the power back on and to figure out what happened.

What they found horrified them.

They found Donna down in the lobby, just in front of the main elevator. She had been bludgeoned to death, three ghastly wounds to her skull. Just a few feet away lay the body of Georgio Giovanni, Donna's lastest boyfriend, dead from one bullet to the head. Next to him lay a heavy cane with a scorpion-tail-tipped handle, covered in blood; the weapon used to kill Donna. In his hand was a pistol. The police ruled it a murder-suicide: Georgio killed Donna, then himself. The stars dreaded having to tell Bella the terrible news.

Bella! Where was she? The last time anyone had seen her, she was getting on the service elevator---

Everyone suddenly remembered the crash that had echoed through the hotel. Terrified, everyone and the police rushed down to the basement.

The doors to the service elevator were jammed shut. Hours later, when they finally managed to open the doors just a crack, they found that the elevator car had somehow managed to turn crooked in the shaft and lodge itself securely in a lopsided manner, holding firm at two opposite corners. A thick, reddish liquid leaked slowly from the lowest corner.

They pounded on what they could of the elevator car, crying out Bella's name, but there was no answer.

Things were never the same after that at the Riley-Bijou. Though the hotel and Club 1313 charged on through another three years of business, the strange happenings that had plagued the hotel before returned en masse, fueled by the indisputable fact that they could not retrieve Bella's body from the elevator car without destroying part of the shaft, which was a main stabilizer point in the hotel's design, and so they left her where she was. In the very end, the haunted Riley-Bijou was abandoned, left to rot at the end of her now weed-infested driveway. The stars made famous by Club 1313 left it for other careers or for retirement.

But Bella, at least, is still there. As far as anyone knows, her body is still in the elevator car. Donna is buried several miles away, at the local cemetery. Bella's spirit haunts the abandoned Riley-Bijou, searching endlessly for a sister she'll never find. Late at night, you can still hear her singing in Club 1313, her rich, smoky voice echoing eerily through the empty building…

To be continued… 


	2. A Dream Come True

A/N: Thank you everyone for reviewing! Reviews help inspire quick work ANYways…

Disclaimer: I didn't put this into the prologue because the prologue didn't deal with anything other than my own ideas and characters; however, since this part does deal with the characters from Danny Phantom, here it is---if you recognize it from the show, it ain't mine. Danny Phantom was created by and belongs to Butch Hartman; I'm just borrowing the characters for entertainment purposes. Unless otherwise noted, all of the characters in this story are my own creations, particularly Bella and Donna. The plot is also mine. I admit freely that I got the 'something really bad happens in an elevator' idea from the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror at Disney's California Adventure, though I went for a different 'something bad' than the one involved in the attraction.

As always, please read, review, and enjoy!

P.S. Wicked Wench of the West---you have forever earned my admiration and respect through your brilliant selection of a screen name

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Black Clover

Part One: A Dream Come True

"Danny, are you _sure_ you're all right?" Jazz cast her younger brother a worried glance as she drove them home from Casper High School.

"I'm _fine_, Jazz," Danny told her, for the tenth time, in an extremely put-out tone. "It was _just _the Box Ghost, and it's _just _a sprained ankle. An Ace bandage and some pain cream tonight and it'll be better by morning."

"You're sure? Because you know, I don't mind taking you over to the hospital and---"

"_Jazz_!" Danny snapped irritably. "I'M. FINE." He glared moodily out the window. "Jeez, what is _with_ you today? One little sprain and you're willing to cart me off to the emergency room!"

Jazz sighed as she tightened her grip on the steering wheel. "I'm sorry," she said. "It's just, ever since I found out you were half-ghost, I'm more worried about you when you get hurt. I don't know how to help you when you're injured, now."

Danny frowned deeper. "What do you mean? If I get hurt, I treat it like I would any normal cut or bruise. It's not rocket science."

Jazz tapped the steering wheel nervously. She bit her lip, as if she were searching for the right words to say. "Danny," she hesitated, then decided to just go for it. "Danny, do you still bleed?"

That was probably _the_ worst way to ask the question. If looks could kill, Danny would've just killed his elder sister several times over. "_Excuse_ me?" he hissed in a low, dangerous voice.

Jazz focused her attention forwards as she turned the car onto their street. "Sorry; that didn't come out the way I wanted it to." She chanced a glance over at her brother, and cringed inwardly as his glare only intensified.

"Did you just ask me---" Danny growled, his voice tight with fury, "---if I was still _human enough _to _bleed_?"

"I didn't mean it like that," Jazz said defensively as she pulled into the driveway behind their house. "It's just that---well, logically, there _should_ be some physiological differences, to explain why you can switch forms back and forth in the first place, so---"

"---So the fact that I'm _different_, now---the fact that I can do things that other people can't, or shouldn't, be able to do; does that somehow make me _less_ human to you?" he demanded, upset and angry at the suggestion itself.

"I did _not_ say that," Jazz snapped angrily, "And don't you _dare_ think that I would ever suggest that you were somehow less or more than anything you were before." She put her car in park and turned it off.

"Then _why_ do you even _ask_?" Danny couldn't get his seatbelt off in the traditional manner in his agitated state and, frustrated, went intangible. The seatbelt made a soft 'thunk' as it hit the back of the passenger seat. "Why does it even _register_ on your list of concerns?"

"I'm worried about you!" Jazz yelled in exasperation. "What if it wasn't just a sprain? What if your leg were broken or you were crushed beneath something before you could go intangible or---heaven forbid---what if someone shot you? What would we do to help you? _Could_ we do anything help you?"

"_You could take me to a hospital!_" Danny shouted. "You could take me to get help! You don't stand around and fret about whether or not I can be helped---you get me help and _then_ you worry about whether or not I'll take to it!"

"What's going on out here!" Jack Fenton's face suddenly appeared at Jazz's driver's side window.

Both Danny and Jazz jumped in shock at their father's sudden appearance. Jack Fenton was not a subtle man in either style, size or fashion; thus, the fact that he was able to get to the car without either of his children noticing spoke volumes about the intensity of their argument.

Jack fixed his children with a stern glare. "What is _with_ you two? I hear you pull up and suddenly my 'Danny-is-going-to-try-to-make-Jazz-dead' sense begins tingling!"

Danny snorted and sullenly refused to meet his father's eyes.

Jazz frowned, then shrugged irritably. "School issues," she muttered. "Danny's telling me to mind my own business."

Jack sighed deeply, his tone almost reaching disgust. "Really, you two. Of all the high school students in the world, the pair of you should know not to take life so seriously. It isn't permanent." He gestured roughly at them to get out of the car. "Well, I won't stand for any pointless bickering in this house. As of right now, you've got two options: call a truce and let it go, or I can stick you both in the Fenton Stockades for the rest of the afternoon."

"Mom won't let you do that," Jazz said.

"Your mother happens to be out at the hardware store getting some spare parts, and you know how she and Annie in power tools get to talking. You'll have a good couple hours in there to think before she gets home."

Danny heaved a dramatic sigh. "_Fine_." He shoved his hand out towards his sister and refused to make eye contact. "Truce?"

Jazz did the same. "Truce."

Jack frowned down at them. "Try it again. Use a little thing called 'sincerity' this time."

Both Danny and Jazz made unhappy noises in their throats, but Jack's stern glare silenced them quickly.

"I appreciate your concern," Danny said in a monotonous tone. "But my problems are my own and I can handle them by myself. If I needed help, I would ask for it."

"Similarly, I want you to know that I am only trying to help and do not mean to be meddling and overprotective. I just want you to be able to come to me with your problems," Jazz replied in an equally monotonous tone.

Jack shook his head in dismay. "Not much better, but it's probably the best I'm going to get out of you two at the moment. Now both of you get inside, do your homework, and leave each other alone!"

"Aye-aye, Cap'n Jack," Danny and Jazz muttered humorlessly as they slunk moodily into the house.

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An hour later found them sharing the particularly cramped breathing space of the Fenton Stockades. Jazz had peered over Danny's shoulder as he did his homework at the kitchen table, and things had gone downhill from there.

Jack was true to his word; it was pretty much a given that he wouldn't let them out until their mother Maddie got home. And while he was going to catch hell for putting them in there, both Danny and Jazz knew he wouldn't feel at all sorry for having done so. It was the way the Fentons had always punished their children---not necessarily by way of putting them in a medieval containment device, but making them stand somewhere particularly unpleasant (though usually facing a bare corner or in front of a broad space of blank wall) and think about what they'd done.

The beauty of the Fenton Stockades, apparently, was the fact that they were both forced to stand perfectly straight and still in order to avoid being nicked by the spikes. Obviously Danny had a slight advantage, as his ability to go intangible would've allowed him the luxury of limited mobility. However, since the Fenton Stockades were down in the lab, where just about every one of his parent's ghost detecting equipment was stored, he didn't want to risk setting something off. Besides, it wasn't anything any other normal person couldn't handle for a couple of hours.

Danny and Jazz stood side by side, arms across their chests, stubbornly avoiding anything that could be construed as eye contact. They didn't talk, didn't move, didn't so much as breathe heavily.

After nearly an hour, the oppressive silence between them was unbearable.

"I'm sorry," Jazz broke the silence first, her voice one of tired honesty. "I didn't mean for it to sound the way it came out. And I admit, I probably shouldn't have asked it in the first place. I just---I'm worried about you, Danny. I really am. But the more I think about it, the more I realize that I can't really do anything to help you other than worry. I can help you hunt down ghosts occasionally, and I can cover for you with Mom and Dad and with Mr. Lancer, but I really can't do anything else to help."

Danny's response was a quiet, "What you can do helps a lot."

Jazz sighed sadly. "It doesn't feel like it. I'd like to do more---I _want_ to do more to help, but short of becoming half-ghost myself, I don't see that happening." She offered him a small smile. "I guess the phrase I'm dancing around is this: I feel helpless when it comes to you, now. And I really don't like the feeling."

Danny was silent, so Jazz decided to take the moment to feel the relief that was settling through her. It felt good to get that off her chest---her feelings had been eating away at her for months, ever since she first witnessed her younger brother transforming from a normal boy into a ghost boy in the alleyway behind the ice cream shoppe.

She looked back to her brother. Danny was wringing his palms nervously, pressing and gripping them with such an intensity that Jazz had to really bite her tongue to keep from telling him to stop pushing the limits of his natural flexibility. Deciding to take a more neutral approach, she carefully asked, "Something you wanna talk about?"

Danny started to open his mouth to speak, but closed it just as quickly as he seemed to think better of it and just shook his head 'no'. Jazz wanted to press the issue---it was obvious he _did_ want to talk about something, and it _was_ her natural inclination to pry around for information---but she wasn't anxious to upset him so soon after getting back into his good graces. Later, she told herself. She would ask him again later.

She rolled her shoulder uncomfortably, and gave a sharp gasp as pain suddenly shot up her arm---she had accidentally grazed one of the spikes. She cursed silently, and hoped their mom would be home soon.

Danny noticed his sister's discomfort, and sighed softly as he smiled at her. Reaching up and putting a hand on her shoulder, he went intangible so they could both relax. Happily, none of the ghost-detecting equipment went off.

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Maddie's fury upon returning home to find her children shut up in the Fenton Stockades was of such magnificence that Danny couldn't help but feel an odd sort of delighted guilt at seeing his father in such an uncomfortable situation, and he even joined Jazz in thinking that three hours in the Stockades was well worth the show.

Currently, the Fenton family was seated at the dinner table, enjoying the delicious Chinese take-out Maddie had brought home as an apology for taking forever at the hardware store. Well, correction: Maddie, Jazz, and Danny were seated at the dinner table enjoying delicious Chinese take-out. Jack was standing at the edge of the table, his neck and wrists fastened securely in Maddie's own Jack-specific punishment devise which she called, confusingly, the Fenton Stocks.

"C'mon, Maddie," Jack whined, waving his hands in a feeble attempt to grab a pair of chopsticks. "Can't I have some yet."

"Not until the kids are finished," Maddie replied crisply. "And for pity's sake, Danny, slow down and chew! Honestly, I'm glad you're finally getting your appetite back, but that doesn't mean you need to inhale your food!"

Danny's only response to his mother's comments was a raised eyebrow. He wasn't eating particularly quickly; actually, in accordance with his father's punishment, he and Jazz were eating much slower than they would normally. Obviously, Maddie was still feeling more anger than love towards her husband at the moment.

And if she had been paying closer attention to Danny eating, she probably would've insisted that he have some more. Aside from some fried rice and most of the potstickers, he really hadn't had all that much to eat. Jazz noticed, though, and kept passing things to him ("to keep them out of Dad's reach") in the hopes that he'd have another helping or at least another mouthful before setting them aside, but he never did. Her brief, worried glances over at him also went ignored.

The sound of the doorbell suddenly echoed through the house. Curious, Maddie looked at the clock on the stove, which read 7:42. "Now, who could that be at this hour?" she asked no one in particular as she got up from her chair and left the kitchen to go answer the door.

Jack wasted no time. "Kids, quick! Gimme an egg roll before she gets back!" Jack waved his hands again, as if the franticness of his waving would increase the speed in which he got his forbidden treat.

"And face Mom's wrath if she catches us?" Jazz gave her father a 'get-serious' look. "_Pass_."

Knowing Jazz wouldn't budge, Jack turned to Danny and gave his son an imploring look. "C'mon, Danny, just one egg roll!"

"I'm with Jazz on this one," Danny's expression matched his sister's. "Given the option, I'll deal with you over Mom any day."

"Oh, you two'll be dealing with me, all right," Jack muttered under his breath, pouting at his lack of children willing to give him an egg roll.

"Mom! Dad's threatening to deal with us!" Jazz ratted out her father to her mother.

"Knock it off, Jack!" Maddie scolded her husband as she re-entered the kitchen carrying a large yellow envelope.

Danny dropped his chopsticks and winced in pain. Jazz caught the motion, and tried to get his attention to ask what was wrong.

"Jack," Maddie looked at the envelope curiously. "The delivery man said this was from the Golden Age Historical Society---"

"WHAT!" Frantically, Jack scooted himself away from the table and shuffled his way over to his wife as quickly as he physically could. "Gimme that!" He snatched the envelope from her hands, tore it open with his teeth, and with a great deal of difficulty extracted the letter from within, all the while chanting, "Did they say 'yes'? Did they say 'yes'?"

He read the letter. "They said 'yes'," he breathed in disbelief; then, in a freakish display of strength, broke out of the Fenton Stocks and assumed a victorious pose. "THEY SAID 'YES'!" He shouted triumphantly. Tossing the note aside, he leapt over to the dinner table, picked up Danny by the shoulders, then began pirouetting himself and his son around the kitchen, singing "They said 'yes'! They said 'yes'!" to the tune of some obscure 80s power ballad.

"Who said 'yes'?" Jazz asked as she went over to Maddie, who had caught and was now reading the letter that, apparently, said 'yes'.

"Dear Mr. & Mrs. Fenton," Maddie read aloud. "After careful deliberation, the board of directors of the Golden Age Historical Society has decided to permit your request to conduct paranormal research at what remains of the Riley-Bijou Grand Hotel. Please be advised that the Society cannot ensure your personal safety, as the most that can be said of the condition of the hotel is that, to our knowledge, it has not collapsed in on itself yet."

"The Riley-Bijou!" Jack cried happily, interrupting Maddie's reading as he continued to spin around in delight. Danny, for his part, struggled to free himself from his father's grasp. "It's a dream come true! The ghost hunter's El Dorado! Strange apparitions! Ghostly sounds! _Death by elevator_!"

"Dad, I'm gonna be sick if you don't put me down!" Danny cried desperately.

"Oops." Jack stopped dancing and put his son down. Danny swayed unsteadily where he was set, one hand clutching his temple, the other the back of his head. "Sorry, son. Excitement got the better of me." Jack rubbed Danny's shoulder comfortingly. Danny didn't seem to notice.

As Jack resumed dancing around the kitchen, Jazz rushed to her brother's side. "What is it?" she whispered. "What's wrong?"

"Burning," he managed to hiss through clenched teeth. "It feels like something's burning a hole through the back of my head!"

Jazz thought fast. "Danny, you look really pale," she said loud enough for their parents to hear, and accentuated her words with a dark glare towards her father. "Maybe you should go lie down on the couch for a little while. Here, I'll help you get settled." Taking him by the shoulders, she quickly steered Danny out of the kitchen and towards the living room.

"It's---going away, now," he panted out as they made it to the couch. "It's not gone, but it's---numbing, I guess." He continued to rub his head. The burning was going away, but now his head felt like it was about to explode. He offered Jazz a small smile. "Thanks for the save."

"No problem." She looked at him in concern. "What happened? I say you drop your chopsticks and---"

"---That's went it started," he said. "The burning. It was like---"he tried to articulate what the pain was like, but found that his headache precluded extensive use of descriptive verbs. Frustrated, he made an intense gesture with his hands and let them fall dramatically to his knees.

Jazz thought back through the previous moments. "That was right when Mom came back. But the only thing different was that she had that envelope." Her expression became one of disbelief. "Do you think---?"

Danny gave her a wry, if somewhat pained, smirk. "Don't look so surprised---although less than a year ago, I would've thought it was crazy, too." He grimaced from the pain in his head and opted to actually lie down. It seemed to help a little bit. "But could it be the letter? Oh, yeah; you bet it could."

"In that case," Jazz stood to leave the living room, "You should stay out of the kitchen for the next few minutes. I'll try to get Mom and Dad to go down to the lab and take the letter with them."

"Oh, not down to the lab!" Danny groaned. "What if I need to get down to the Fenton Portal, especially if it _is_ the letter that's causing this?"

Jazz frowned. "Well, then, what should I do?"

Danny groaned again and put his arm over his eyes. "Just see if you can get Mom and Dad away from the letter. I'll check it out when I can actually stand again without falling."

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To be continued…


	3. Whom Even Ghosts Fear

A/N: Ah, reviews! How I love them! It helps to know that I'm not just writing this for my own amusement. Anyways, more strangeness and zaniness ensue as our story continues! And as always, please read, review, and enjoy!

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Black Clover

Chapter 2: Whom Even Ghosts Fear

It hadn't taken much effort on Jazz's part to get her parents out of the kitchen and away from the letter. After recovering from the shock of coming back to the kitchen and finding them actually waltzing (and with a surprising degree of skill), an offhand comment that research in such a haunted building might require some more specialized ghost-detecting equipment had sent Jack and Maddie careening down the stairs to their lab to start designing prototypes. The letter lay forgotten on the kitchen floor.

Jazz approached the letter cautiously, regarding it with a wary gaze. It was good stationary, probably pretty expensive, too---thick, heavy paper expertly embossed with elaborate logos of varying organizations. It didn't appear the slightest bit sinister.

Hesitantly, she leaned down and picked the letter up. In the top right-hand corner was a sleek art-deco styled logo with the initials RBG---she assumed it was the logo for the Riley-Bijou Grand Hotel. Curious, she ran her thumb over the embossment, and thought for a moment she felt a mild tingling sensation. But she shrugged it off; she was still freaking out over Danny and probably imagined the feeling.

"Oh, yeah." Jazz whirled around to see Danny at the entryway to the kitchen, his face contorted in pain, leaning heavily against the doorframe for support. "The burning's…back. It's definitely that…thing." His voice was rough with pain and, to Jazz's alarm, he was actually gasping for air.

"Danny, go back to the living room and lie down," Jazz said, fixing him with her very best 'I'm-your-older-sister-you'd-better-mind-me' look. "Now that we know for sure, you're in no condition to examine this right now."

Danny was unfazed. "So…you want me to go lie down until I feel better…so I can come back…and experience this pain again." He tried to glare at Jazz, but only managed a pained wince. "Pass," he panted. He took a slow, deliberate step forward, only to find himself in a losing battle with gravity.

Jazz dropped the letter and managed to catch Danny before he hit the floor. He clung to her as he fought to regain his balance, his limbs trembling violently from the effort. "'Kay…that didn't go…quite like I planned." Danny tried to give Jazz a reassuring smile, but with the pain he was in it came out looking very much like a grimace.

"Danny, please." Jazz tightened her hold on him as she felt him start to slip towards the floor again. "Let me help you back to the couch."

"It's just gonna happen again," Danny hissed. "I don't wanna feel…like this again, Jazz. Just…lemme get this…over with."

Jazz bit her lip. In this condition, she could easily drag him out of the kitchen, and out of harm's way. But he was right---he'd feel better, but then he'd come back and he'd be in pain again. It would be better to get this out of the way right now.

That didn't mean she had to like it.

"For the record, I'm against this," she finally relented.

"Duly…noted," Danny panted in response. He took a shaky step towards the letter, and his body shuddered as it tried to collapse on him.

Jazz slung Danny's arm over her shoulder and gripped his waist. "Lean on me," she ordered, her voice allowing no room for argument. "We'll go slowly."

And go slowly they did. Danny struggled for every step, while Jazz struggled with the fact that Danny was pretty much dead weight. They were both tired by the time they got to the spot on the floor where the letter had fallen.

"Be careful, Danny," Jazz warned as, with her help, Danny reached down for the letter. Danny made an odd sound in the back of his throat in response, but Jazz couldn't tell if it was a gasp or a snort.

A second later, she didn't care.

The moment Danny's fingertips brushed the thick paper, there was a low, deafening roar, an almost black flash of light, and for one brief, horrifying moment, Danny's entire hand and forearm became skeletal. As in, no skin, no flesh, _just bone_.

And that was _it _for Jazz. With a surge of strength that surprised even her, Jazz all but threw Danny over her shoulders and dashed out of the kitchen as fast as her legs would take her.

.As quickly as it had come, that uncanny strength left her, and Jazz only just barely managed to crash Danny and herself onto the floor in the living room.

Danny rolled away from her, panting hard and clutching his arm protectively to his chest. Clambering to her knees, Jazz desperately tried to pry his arm up to examine the damage. "Danny! Give me your arm _now_!"

Danny made a weak attempt to resist, but was currently no match for Jazz's worry. Catching his shoulder in a claw-like grip, she lurched his arm up, ignoring his sharp gasp of pain.

His hand and arm were flesh again. She could feel the violent twitching of sinewy muscle through his now-reddened skin, and watched in amazement as his fingers clenched and unclenched involuntarily. A large, ugly bruise was starting to form on the inside of his wrist.

But his arm was flesh again. Not just bone, but skin and flesh and the bone underneath, just where it should be. "You're all right," she nearly sobbed.

"That's all…a matter of opinion," Danny moaned into the carpet. "Mental note: be prepared…to lose an arm next time."

"_NEXT TIME!_" Jazz cried. "Danny, there is _not_ going to _be_ a 'next time'! _You_ are going to stay away from that thing! I'll read it, I'll memorize it, I'll recite it for you verbatim and I'll even track down the origins of every single seal and logo on it, but you're not going anywhere _near_ it! _Do you hear me!_"

"Kinda hard not to…," Danny mumbled weakly.

"Danny, I'm serious!" Jazz pulled her younger brother up into a tight hug. "When I saw your arm turn---when I---"Her voice broke, and Danny felt her arms tighten harder around him. "Just---stay away from it, Danny," she whispered, her voice laced with tears. "Just stay away."

Danny was still for a moment, then, with great effort, wrapped his own arms around his sister. "'Kay, Jazz," he sighed. "Because you asked. I'll stay away."

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A few minutes later, Jazz managed to struggle to her feet and left to go start memorizing the letter and get a start on identifying all the seals and logos. Danny remained on the living room floor, just generally laying in pain.

There was absolutely nothing subtle about the pain. The burning had been intense, immediate, and unrelenting, with no comforting numbness to soothe it until he had left the letter's direct vicinity, and then it was slow to recede. The pain had been a spider web of fire, shooting out waves of unbearable pain from the back of his skull until it had flooded completely through his head, then cruelly repeated the process. And then his arm…

He didn't even want to think about how badly _that_ had hurt.

It _still_ hurt, in fact. Not as badly as it had when…yeah; but the muscle contractions were non-stop, his fingers repeatedly clenching and cramping and abruptly relaxing before clenching up once more. He really wanted it to stop. He really hoped it _would_ stop.

And that bruise was really worrying, too. Already purple-black and roughly the size of a fifty-cent piece, it was huge and ugly and right on the inside of his wrist, where the joint between his hand and arm was. It sent a sharp pain shooting up his arm every time it was irritated---in other words, every time his arm cramped. So if he were to get really technical about it, his arm was actually in two separate kinds of pain, one excessively aggravated by the other.

Of course, he didn't really care that much. In reality, all he cared about was the fact that he was in a whole lotta pain, and he really couldn't do much other than lie as still as possible and hope the pain would go away as quickly as possible. Of course it wasn't, but it was all he could really do to hope for it to.

He looked at the bruise again. Yes, it really was very ugly and hurt almost as much as his head, but in his brief, lucid moments between muscle cramps he thought it was taking a discernable shape. What that shape happened to be, he never got far enough in the thought to figure out. Maybe it'd hit him once his head stopped feeling like it was going to explode.

On the plus side, his other three limbs were, after some rest, much more willing to do what he wanted them to. They allowed him to drag himself over to the couch and to pull himself into a sitting position, and he felt that, in a few more minutes, he might even be capable of dragging himself upstairs to his room.

Might. Wasn't quite sure about that. Probably better to cool his heels for a while longer before attempting anything quite that complicated. His body wouldn't complain.

He let out a deep sigh. Stupid letter from the stupid Golden Age Historical Society. He'd been having a fairly good day before that letter had appeared.

Actually, no; no, he hadn't. He'd gotten a C on his English quiz, and as usual math was going completely over his head. The Box Ghost had annoyed him no fewer than four times and he'd gotten his ankle banged up before he'd finally managed to trap the pesky spirit in the Fenton Thermos. Then there had been that whole thing with Jazz and the Fenton Stockades and the worrying over whether he still was, in fact, human---

Okay. So his day had, in fact, sucked like nothing else. At least he'd been able to stand without falling over before that letter showed up.

And about the whole 'Jazz-wondering-if-he-still-bled' thing; he knew she hadn't meant to upset him like that. And it wasn't as if he hadn't thought the same thing himself several times since the accident happened, but---he didn't really know; it felt harsher coming from her than it had coming from his mind.

__

Did he still bleed? Yes, he did; with the regularity he was beaten up, he could say that quite authoritatively. But he never bled much, and never for very long. Actually, most of his injuries healed within a day or two; minor cuts and bruises were often gone in a couple of hours. In his better moods, he thought it was pretty cool; in his more insecure, it was just one more thing that set him apart from everyone else. Being a teenager, the insecure moods were the more frequent.

The bruise was almost solid black now, and (though he hadn't thought it possible) was even more hideous than before. Quick healing powers or not, he was pretty sure this thing wasn't going to be going away for a while. Served him right, he supposed, for being so determined to look at something he knew was already causing him unbearable pain. He just knew that Jazz would probably end up referring back to this incident in the future whenever he decided to do something of questionable wisdom. He could see her now: scowling darkly, her hands squarely on her hips, saying, "Danny, be careful! Remember how badly the letter thing worked out?" The image nearly brought a smile to his face.

That smile, of course, immediately became a cringe of pain as a particularly sharp jolt shot up his arm. His arm wasn't getting better; in fact, the cramping and clenching was getting worse as time went on. He sighed again, almost in resignation. More than likely, his arm was going to be keeping him awake most of the night.

Maybe he could try and get used to it. Of course, how one gets used to absolute agony was beyond him. So just lose some more sleep. Again. He let out another sigh. Maybe if he focused on something other than the pain, he could at least try to ignore it…

So his parents had put in a request to do research at the Riley-Bijou? This was news to him---but then, it really wasn't too much of a surprise. Ever since he'd gotten that _Ghostly Tales from the Riley-Bijou_ DVD for his dad, he couldn't recall a week going by without him wandering into the living room and finding them watching it _again_. It was to the point that he knew the order of the stories the program featured by heart.

The program started with the lovely Esperanza and the noble Diego, the tragic lovers fated never to meet in the afterlife, and then moved onto Little Gracie Russi, the little four-year-old daughter of the hotel's original owners. Then came the 'animal section' of the DVD, featuring the red bull Fuego, the flock of penguins that haunted the hotel's pool, and rounded out with Sun-Moon-and-Stars, a smoky Maine Coon cat with numerous heavenly markings in her fur. Roaring Twenties gangsters Miss Adelaide and Nathan brought the show up to Club 1313, and a lengthy segment on the beautiful Black Clover Sisters ended the program. That wasn't nearly all of the ghosts that supposedly inhabited the Riley-Bijou, but they were some of the most well-known ones.

He cringed when he thought of the Black Clover Sisters. Beautiful and talented twin sisters, they had both died tragically on the same night---one by murder, the other by a freak accident. It was a great tragedy made that much worse by the fact that the authorities had never been able to retrieve the one sister's body (Bella; he was fairly certain it was Bella who'd died by freak accident) from the elevator car where she had died. She was still in there, and she haunted Club 1313.

Ew. Eighty-plus years trapped in an elevator-turned-tomb. She must be a mummy by now. And though she'd been drop-dead gorgeous when she was alive (the program featured a few _very_ flattering portraits of her and her sister Donna), Danny doubted mummification agreed with her looks. But what did her know? She was probably very pretty for a mummy; in fact, he suspected strongly that it would take _quite_ a bit to make one of the infamous Black Clover Sisters truly repulsive.

Wait…_clover_…Danny looked again at the hideous bruise on the inside of his wrist.

__

That's what it was. _That's_ what it looked like---a black four-leaf clover.

He could see it perfectly now; an odd, round-cornered square, curiously and clearly divided into four 'leaves', with a thin 'stem' following the natural curve of his wrist. It was still ugly beyond all reason, but at least he knew what the shape was.

He frowned at the bruise. First the letter about allowing his parents to do research at the Riley-Bijou, now a bruise in the shape of a black clover on his wrist. There was no coincidence here; these things were definitely connected, but the precise hows and whys were still a mystery. And the longer he sat there in pain, the more convinced he was that he couldn't wait for Jazz to come back to start looking for answers.

His mind made up, he took a quick look around the room to make sure no one ( i.e. his parents) was around to see, then quietly murmured to himself, "Going Ghost."

To his pleasant surprise, he found that, thought it didn't completely numb the pain, switching forms sent a cooling wave flooding through his body that helped him feel more comfortable than before. His arm continued to twitch involuntarily, which was discouraging---such an obvious injury would practically paint him a target in the Ghost Zone. But he couldn't wait around for the clenching to stop. Hmm…maybe if he kept his arm close to his chest, that might disguise some of the twitching. At any rate, he wasn't coming up with any better ideas and time was marching on.

Going invisible, he jumped off the couch and went through the floor to get down into his parents' lab. Not the brightest move on his part; his parents had turned on all of their ghost-detecting equipment ("Just in case ghosts try to sabotage our plans for the Riley-Bijou!") and it was all working in fine form. The moment he entered the lab, everything went off in a loud, painful, unified roar. As can be guessed, this did little to help his headache. Spotting the fortuitously open Fenton Portal, he sped towards it, all the while clutching his twitching arm closer to his chest. He spared half a second to see how his parents were reacting, and put on an extra burst of speed when he realized their jumpsuits had gone into full battle mode.

The Ghost Zone around the Fenton Portal was deserted; considering Danny could hear the ghost-detecting equipment still going off back in the lab through the Portal, he didn't really need to wonder why. He _did_ mutter a word his parents refused to believe he knew, since a lack of ghosts around the Fenton Portal meant he'd have to travel a considerable ways away in order to find even _one_ to talk to.

And given how his day was going, he didn't doubt that one ghost would end up being Skulker or Ember or someone else he really wasn't in any condition to fend off. He scowled to himself. He'd thought this was a good idea _why_? Sighing as he rubbed his twitching arm, he picked a direction and headed out.

---------------------------------------------------

It was almost an hour before he spotted another ghost. And to his considerable relief, it was someone who really wasn't inclined to fight with him, at least not in the way he was used to. Kitty leaned heavily towards more psychological combat tactics---the biggest things he had to worry about with her were Johnny 13 showing up and keeping his wits about him while talking to her (currently more of a challenge than usual with his headache, but he was confident enough that Kitty wasn't sufficiently mad enough at him to give him too hard a time. He hoped.).

She spotted him coming towards her and flashed him a dark glare. "What do _you_ want?" She huffed, her tone annoyed and barely civil.

Danny floated down in front of her, careful to keep his expression and body language as neutral as possible. "Hello, Kitty," he said politely. "I need some help---"

"---Confessing your love to your little goth galpal?" She interrupted coolly. "My advice: a box of her favorite candy, a flattering piece of jewelry, and a lot of begging on your knees for forgiveness for taking your sweet time about it. Now get lost; Johnny's gonna be picking me up any---" She stopped mid-sentence and her gaze turned scrutinizing. "What's with your arm?" she asked.

Danny was gaping at her, totally floored by Kitty's reference to Sam. "What? No---I don't…why'd you even…?" He shook his head violently; he'd let her catch him off-guard and distract him. Curse it, Fenton, _focus_. "Look, I need some info. What can you tell me about the Riley-Bijou Hotel?"

"You're avoiding my ques---" Kitty started to retort, but as his question registered in her mind, her eyes widened in horror and she took up a defensive stance. "Why?" she demanded, and Danny was surprised to hear terror edging her voice. "What could you possibly want to know about---that place?"

"My parents are going there to do research," Danny replied as evenly as he could, since this subject was obviously making Kitty dangerously skittish. Slowly and in her full view, he pulled off his glove to show her the bruise. "And when I touched the letter saying they could, my arm went skeletal and _this_ appeared on my wrist---"

As soon as she saw the bruise, Kitty screamed and jumped away from him. "The Black Clover! You've been marked! Stay away!" she shrieked, scrambling backwards away from him, as if she were afraid he was going to chase after her.

"Marked?"he asked, confused. "What do you mean, 'marked'?"

"You're marked!" She screamed again. "Doomed! There's no escape for you! She's gonna destroy you! _STAY AWAY FROM ME!_"

"Kitty!" Oh, no. Danny looked up to see Johnny 13 roaring in on his motorcycle, his Shadow curled up behind him, loyally awaiting his orders. "What're you screamin' bout---_you_!" Johnny said venomously as he noticed Danny floating a mere twenty feet from Kitty. He jumped off his motorcycle and landed between Danny and Kitty, his Shadow following him down.

This was _so_ not good. Johnny's Shadow was a tough opponent even when he was in good enough shape to fight. Probably better to spilt while he had the chance. Not that Johnny was going to give him one.

"Shadow!" Johnny barked. "Atta---!"

He was cut off when Kitty abruptly latched herself around his waist. "Johnny! He's been marked! She's gonna get him! He's doomed!" To the surprise of both Johnny and Danny, Kitty was actually sobbing.

Johnny blinked down at his girlfriend in confusion. "Come again…?" he asked.

"The Black Clover!" she cried, pointing shakily at Danny. "It's on his wrist! That psycho wych's marked him! She's gonna destroy him, Johnny!"

Johnny's eyes widened. "The Black Clover? You're sure?" He whipped his head up to look at Danny, who held his wrist up for Johnny to see. "Oh, jeez," Johnny hissed, grabbing Kitty and steering her back towards his motorcycle. "Bad road, man; _major_ bad road."

"Why?" Danny asked desperately, frightened by the reactions the bruise was getting. "What makes it so bad?"

"The Black Clover," Johnny said in a low, terrified voice. "The symbol of the Riley-Bijou Wych. She doesn't just kill---she _destroys_. And she's marked you as _next_." He ushered Kitty onto the back of his motorcycle before climbing on himself. "Man, I don't like you much---but I wouldn't have wished_ this_ on you." His motorcycle roared to life. "Bad road, man. Been nice annoyin' you." Before Danny could try to stop them, Johnny and Kitty sped off on his motorcycle, leaving Danny not only with more questions, but with an intense feeling of dread.

"This can't be good," Danny cringed as another sharp pain shot up through his arm.

-----------------------------------------------

__

To be continued…


	4. The Mystery Deepens

A/N: AAAAHHHH! This chapter was SO frustrating to write! I knew what needed to happen, but I had just a heck of a time getting it out in any sort of understandable manner. I'm not really happy with this, my fourth re-write of this chapter (I think it's maybe at 67 percent of what I want, and that's being generous), but to be quite honest I'm sick of it because I want to get on to the bloody hotel already! So just for future reference, if I ever feel the need to re-vamp this fic, THIS chapter is at the top of the list!

Ah, I feel better having ranted. Anyways…

The mystery deepens! Danny's been marked---what does that mean? And if Johnny and Kitty are any indication, even ghosts don't want to go anywhere near the Riley-Bijou---why? To quote Danny: "This _can't_ be good."

PS Thanks, Silent Elegy, for pointing out the half-repeated line in Chapter 2. SO annoyed me when I saw that---really spoiled the dramatic effect of that line. Don't know quite how it happened, but I re-loaded Chapter 2 when I uploaded this chapter, so it should be okay.

PS Saramis Kismet, on comment for Chapter 1---_Intangiblejust able to get out of there the Fenton Stockades anyways._ True, but consider---how could they have explained it to Jack if he happened to catch them outside of the Stockades? But in this case, I think it was more of the fact that Danny and Jazz felt they deserved some sort of punishment and figured that standing in the Fenton Stockades was about as good as anything else.

As always, please read, review, and enjoy!

****

Black Clover

Chapter 3: The Mystery Deepens

Jazz paced around Danny's room, worrying a now-ragged piece of paper with her hands. Where could he _be_? She'd left him alone for maybe twenty minutes, and he'd gone and disappeared on her, literally! If she weren't still so freaked out about seeing his arm turn from flesh to bone in the space of a few seconds, she'd really be annoyed at him right now.

She sighed heavily as she sat down on the edge of his bed. Various conflicting emotions were swirling within her, all centered around her younger brother. She hated that Danny could use his powers to get away from her, but she was proud that otherwise he used his powers for the general good; she wanted to lock him away and protect him from prying eyes; she wanted to help him with his problems, but now his problems were so beyond her realm of experience she'd probably end up being more of a hindrance than a help to him… The poor paper in her hands was getting more and more ragged by the moment.

"Hey, Jazz," Danny's tired voice echoed through his room, and he slowly materialized before her eyes.

"Danny!" She cried, jumping off the bed to catch her brother in a relieved hug. "Where have you been?" She demanded. "I've been going out of my mind with worry!"

She felt Danny give an odd sigh. "Ghost Zone," he murmured, leaning into her shoulder. "Thought I'd go look for some answers." He tensed up suddenly. "Jazz, can I lie down? I feel like I'm gonna collapse any second now."

She released him and motioned him to his bed. He floated up over it, then dramatically flopped down onto his back. Jazz took a seat on the edge of the bed beside him and watched with concerned eyes as he rubbed his arm. "Is it getting better?" she asked hopefully.

Danny shook his head. "Not really. The twitching's starting to go away, but the muscle cramps are getting worse." He sighed sadly. "I don't think I'm gonna get much sleep tonight."

"You should try to," Jazz said firmly as she watched Danny rub his temple tiredly.

"I intend to try. I just don't think I'm going to have much success at it." He peered at her out of exhausted eyes. "Find anything out?"

Jazz shrugged. "Not really. Just that the Golden Age Historical Society's arranged for Mom and Dad to do their research with the Doctors Ward, who are apparently the world's leading ghost historians. That , and the Society will _not_ take any responsibly if Mom and Dad get hurt while doing research. They say over and over again that the hotel has structural damage and has been condemned for a very good reason and they're taking their own lives in their hands by doing research there in the first place." She smoothed out the paper she was holding. "But I did find one strange thing."

Danny gazed at her out of eyes that were struggling to stay awake and focused. "What's strange?"

"This logo." Jazz showed him the paper. On it was her drawing of the art deco logo with the initials RBG. "When I first picked up the letter, this logo was in the top right-hand corner. I _know_ it was; I distinctly remember tracing it with my thumb. But it's not there anymore. It's like it wasn't even there to begin with."

"Or like it jumped locations?" Danny asked. When Jazz responded with a confused look, he took off his glove and showed her the now-distinct black clover bruise on the inside of his wrist. "Kitty told me this was the Black Clover, and Johnny 13 said it was the symbol of the Riley-Bijou Wych. Apparently, it means she's marked me as next."

" 'Marked'? 'Next'?" Jazz repeated, her brow furrowing in confusion as she gingerly traced the bruise with a fingernail. "Marked next for what?"

"Complete and total destruction, according to Johnny," Danny sighed, and squirmed uncomfortably. "And since every other ghost I asked went on to tell me I was 'doomed! Doomed! DOOMED!'" here he mimicked the extreme gestures of the terrified ghosts, "I'm somewhat inclined to believe it."

"_Every_ other ghost told you that?" Jazz asked, unable to keep the fear out of her voice.

Danny shrugged weakly. "Well, Plasmius's vulture cronies called me a poor bastard and gave me pitying looks, but I'm pretty sure they were thinking 'you're doomed! Doomed! DOOMED!'---_Gaahhh!_" He gave a sharp cry as his arm clenched up again, _hard_.

"Massage it," Jazz told him gently. "It might help the muscles relax faster."

Danny took her advice, and felt his muscles slowly loosen to the rhythmic pressure. "This _sucks_," he panted.

"I can imagine," Jazz stroked his arm comfortingly. "It hurts just to watch you."

"S-sorry." His eyes rolled blindly with a pain he was trying to hide. He closed them and turned his head away from her. "I don't mean to cause trouble."

"Oh, Danny," Jazz sighed. "You're not causing any trouble. You just have an uncanny, unsettling habit of attracting it."

Danny chuckled humorlessly. "I don't want to," he said, his voice more tired than it had been a moment ago. "You know that, don't you?"

Jazz squeezed his hand. "Of course I do. Don't ever think I don't."

"Good," he said weakly. "Because sometimes…I really…wish…I…"

Confused by Danny's failure to complete his sentence, Jazz shook his shoulder. "Danny?"

Abruptly, a pair of white rings passed over him, and he was in his human form once more. Her mind immediately fixing on the worst-case scenario, she hurriedly pressed her fingers to his neck and tried desperately to find a pulse. She found one with no problem, and it was a good, strong one. She let out the breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding. He was all right. He'd just fallen asleep. Or passed out. She wasn't quite sure which one. She was hoping for the sleep.

She got up, tugged Danny's blanket out from underneath him, and draped it over his still form. Danny made a soft cooing sound in his throat, but otherwise didn't stir.

Jazz wished desperately that she could do more for him. She hated feeling like this. She hated that Danny was in pain, hurting in a way she could scarcely imagine, and she couldn't do a thing about it. Except worry. She could worry all she wanted, but that didn't feel particularly useful.

Knowing that what Danny needed most at the moment was sleep, she turned to leave the room. When she reached the doorway, she looked back at him. He was laying too still for her liking; she could only barely see his chest rise and fall as he breathed. Sighing deeply to herself, she turned off the light and closed the door behind her. She heard the lock click into place, then walked down the hall to her own room.

---------------------------------------------------

The return to wakefulness was not a wholly pleasant experience for Danny. His body felt heavy, like he suddenly weighed a lot more than he used to. His throat felt raw, and it hurt to swallow. As his mind slowly returned to alertness, he realized that what had woken him was the sound of raised voices coming from downstairs. He was also stunned to notice three things: 1)His headache was gone (Yay!), 2) It was still dark outside (Boo!), and 3) Jazz was climbing in through his bedroom window (Huh?).

Jazz noticed tired blue eyes peering up at her from the bed. "Hey," she said softly. "Sleep well?"

"I guess," he rasped, cringing at how speaking made his throat hurt. Still, he persisted. "Why'd you just come through my window?"

She gave him a small, embarrassed smile. "I locked your door when I left your room last night. This was the only way to get in without breaking the door down." She reached over and brushed his hair out of his eyes. "Feeling any better?"

"A little." Stiffly, Danny pushed himself up into a sitting position. His headache was gone, yes, but he felt…lightheaded. Dizzy, really. "What's going on downstairs?"

"It's Vlad Masters," Jazz said. "He and Dad are going toe-to-toe over the whole Riley-Bijou thing."

"What!" Danny cried, jumping out of his bed and onto his feet. The Earth lurched violently beneath him, and he suddenly found Jazz by his side, helping him to sit back down.

"He got here about an hour ago," she told him quietly. "Somehow, he heard about Mom and Dad doing research at the Riley-Bijou, and he's _freaking out_."

"Why?" Danny panted, as he tried to will the world to stop spinning long enough for him to see straight.

"I don't know," Jazz replied honestly. "I can't think of why he'd show up now, of all times. I mean, aside from his friendships with Mom and Dad, he really doesn't seem all that interested in ghosts."

Danny was about to snap at her how she could possibly think that, but it suddenly occurred to him that he'd neglected one _huge_ part of his whole being 'half-ghost' story to her; he'd never sat down and told her that Vlad Masters was not only half-ghost as well, but had twenty years experience on him, was his arch-nemesis, and was determined to make Danny his apprentice and claim Maddie as his beloved.

That last part made him want to gag.

The sound of a door slamming abruptly echoed throughout the house. Outside, they could hear a car starting up and then the screeching of tires as it sped away. For a few brief moments, the house was completely quiet.

"I think the argument's over," Jazz said mildly.

"I suppose that's _one_ way to put it," a silky, dangerous voice said behind them.

Whirling around at the voice, the Fenton siblings jumped to their feet, Danny putting himself between Jazz and their intruder. "You just left!" he snapped viciously.

Vlad Plasmius gave him a 'get-serious' look. "For future reference, it's called 'driving down the street and parking the car', Daniel." His red eyes flashed in surprise as he finally recognized Jazz. "And what's this? You finally let someone in on your little secret? How sweet! Tell me, Jazmine, did he tell you himself, or were you the only one bright enough in this house to figure it out on your own?"

Jazz was surprised that she recognized the voice. "Vlad Masters!"

"Well, that answers _that_ question." He smiled at her. It was not a nice smile. "Since I'll be revising my plans anyways, I'll have to be sure to fit you in somewhere."

Danny struck a defensive pose, trying to hide the fact that he could barely keep his balance. "Back off, Vlad. Don't you have anything better to do, like track down a psychotic Siamese to keep you company?"

"_I will not get a cat!_" Plasmius snapped. "Now show me the mark!"

Danny frowned. "What mark?" he asked, covering his wrist in a loose fold of his t-shirt.

"The mark you showed to my vultures last night. Please, Danny, you're not me. You can't lie to save your life, although given who's marked you such a skill would be rendered useless to begin with." Plasmius extended his hand out to Danny. "Now _show_ me the mark."

"_Why_ do you want to see it?" Jazz demanded, side-stepping Danny to talk directly to Plasmius. "What difference does it make?"

"The _difference_ it makes, Jazmine, is that all of my plans are currently going up in smoke because your no-wit father has decided to endanger his entire family by undertaking a foolhardy effort to conduct 'research'---" here he made the quotation mark signs with his fingers. "---at a haunted hotel that happens to be inhabited by evil incarnate!"

"Aren't _you_ evil incarnate?" Danny snorted.

"Now, that's just mean," Plasmius replied with a pout.

"Wait, hold on," Jazz rubbed her temple in confusion. "Evil incarnate? Does this have anything to do with the Riley-Bijou Wych?"

"It _is_ the Riley-Bijou Wych," Plasmius said darkly. "The woman is behind the deaths of at least fifty people on the hotel grounds since the Riley-Bijou was abandoned over eighty years ago, and that's not including the number of people who have merely gone 'missing'." He made the quotation mark signs again.

Danny looked at the black clover on his wrist. "What does she do to her victims?" He asked quietly.

Plasmius gave a noticeable shudder. "Some things are best left to the imagination, my boy."

"ANSWER MY QUESTION!" Danny shouted, his eyes glittering dangerously. Jazz started in alarm at Danny's sudden outburst; Plasmius merely raised an annoyed eyebrow.

"You really want to know? Fine," Plasmius flipped his cape back irritably. "Those who are too ignorant to properly fear her often refer to her as the 'Soul Destroyer'. When she finishes what she does to you, there is nothing left of what you once were. People who die at her hands don't become ghosts, Danny; they can't. There is _nothing_ _left_."

Danny traced the black clover with his fingers. "Great…" he muttered.

His bedroom door suddenly burst open, and Jack and Maddie jumped into the room. "We heard shouting!" Jack said dramatically. "Is there a---" He spotted Plasmius. "GHOST!"

Maddie pulled a plasma blaster from her holster. "Freeze, ecto-scum!"

"Oh, fluffernutters…!" Plasmius cursed. Going intangible, he passed through the wall for a quick exit.

"Quick, Maddie!" Jack shouted. "We might still catch him if we get outside!" In the next moment, Danny and Jazz's parents fled their son's room, leaving their children behind in their wake.

It took Jazz a moment to take what had just happened in. "_Un_believable!" she cried. "We're finally getting some useful information, and what do Mom and Dad do? Chase our source away from us!"

Danny didn't say anything. He stared blankly at the black clover on his wrist, taking in what Plasmius had said. _There is nothing left…_ the words rang cruelly in his head. That meant…

He finally gave in to his wavering balance and allowed his legs to fold beneath him. Clasping his hand around the bruise, he gave a despairing moan, and not even Jazz kneeling down next to him, rubbing his back and telling him that they'd come up with something, could convince him to deny the reality of one cruel fact.

He wasn't just going to die.

He was going to be completely eliminated from existence.

---------------------------------------------------

To be continued…


	5. Little Details and Little Secrets

A/N: Just to clarify a point, since a few of you have asked me about this and I'm naturally inclined to attempt to be helpful …

In _Ultimate Enemy_, Jazz learns that Vlad Masters is Danny's archenemy and that he also has a portal to the Ghost Zone. She does **_not_**, however, learn that Vlad is half-ghost like Danny. Behold, the verbatim transcript from that scene:

Jazz: "You're not Danny!"

Dan Phantom: "I was, but I grew out of it. The Danny you know is floating helplessly in the Ghost Zone ten years in the future."

Jazz: "He'll escape. He'll beat you."

Dan Phantom: "How? Is the answer: 'A', the Fenton Portal? Destroyed it. 'B', the only remaining portal? The one that my idiot cheesehead archenemy has? Soon as I find it, that's going, too."

Jazz: "Cheesehead? Vlad Masters? He's your archenemy?"

Dan Phantom: "Is it 'C', you? No; you can't stop me from cheating on the C.A.T. and solidifying my future, so it must be 'D'! _(shoots Jazz with a plasma blast) _None of the above."

And there you have it!

ANYways…I was going to jump straight to the Riley-Bijou from the end of last chapter. My lovely soundboard DigitalTink (she's be my lovely beta if she had the time and if I weren't so OCD about doing it by meonesies) pointed out that Danny'd look like a pretty scuzztafic friend if he went off to face his untimely doom without at least trying to say goodbye to Sam and Tucker. I thought at first that I could just throw in a paragraph saying that he did, but that seemed a cop-out for one and felt wrong for another. So that's partially where this chapter comes from. After thinking about it, I thought I'd also do some plot-building to give the story a bit more structure, so that's where the other part comes from.

Viewers of the TV series _Bewitched_ might recognize the format of the beginning of Jack and Danny's conversation.

PS Silent Elegy---very glad someone finally mentioned making that connection. For the botanically impaired, _belladonna_ is the formal name of deadly nightshade, which is a very pretty and very poisonous plant with shiny black berries and purple or red (or purple-red) bell-shaped flowers. In other words, don't eat it. _Bella Donna_---Italian for 'beautiful lady'---is another reason I chose the names, since it describes both sisters well.

As always, please read, review, and enjoy!

****

Black Clover

Chapter 4: Little Details and Little Secrets

Samantha Manson stood in the hallway next to Danny Fenton's locker. She sighed. She looked at her watch. She sighed again. She shifted her textbooks from one arm to the other. She looked at her watch again. She rocked back on her combat-booted heels. She looked at her watch again. She sighed again.

Tucker Foley trotted up to her, a worried look on his face. "Any sign of him?" he asked her.

"No," Sam said irritably. She looked at her watch again. "Tucker, this isn't like him. He doesn't just not show up without telling us."

"I know," Tucker said, fiddling nervously with his PDA. "Oh, man---what if something's happened to him?"

"Let's not jump to conclusions," Sam snapped, her tone harsher than she really meant. Tucker knew it was just nerves on her part, so he let it go. Sam shifted her books in her arms again. "Maybe he ran into a ghost on the way here," she mused quietly. "Or maybe he just accidentally slept in . Or---"

"Danny has food poisoning?" They heard Mr. Lancer's voice echo from his open classroom door. Curious, they crept closer to the door.

"Yes, he's really not feeling well this morning," they heard Jazz reply. "It's really mild, but it is food poisoning. We're pretty sure it was the potstickers; Mom's not feeling too well today, either, and Dad and I didn't have any. But Danny was so sick this morning, he was having problems standing. So we made him stay home so he could get some rest."

"Wise move on your parts, and it explains why you need his assignments for today," He paused, and Sam and Tucker tried to linger closer to the door without looking like they were eavesdropping. "But why do you need all of his assignments for next week, as well?" they heard Lancer ask.

"Mom and Dad are going on a research trip next week, and Danny and I have been invited along. Kinda like a family vacation." She paused. "I'm sorry it's so last minute; we didn't know we were going until last night."

"Oh, it's no trouble, Ms. Fenton. I just question your parents' wisdom, taking the two of you out of school for the week prior to year-end finals."

"They admit the timing is bad," Jazz said. "But Danny and I'll be okay---I promise we'll be getting plenty of studying done while we're gone."

"And if I heard that phrase coming from your brother, I'd _really_ be worried about the two of you being gone the week before finals." They could almost hear the smile in Lancer's voice. "But coming from you---I think I know you well enough that you'll make sure both of you are prepared for finals when you get back. I'll have a packet ready for Danny by the end of the day."

"Thanks, Mr. Lancer. See you later this afternoon, then." Jazz said goodbye and walked out of the classroom.

Sam and Tucker followed her down the hall. "Danny's sick?" Tucker asked, causing Jazz to start in surprise. She relaxed as soon as she realized who they were.

"It's just a little bit of food poisoning," she smiled at them. "Some rest and fluids and he'll be fine."

Sam raised an eyebrow at Jazz's explanation. "You know, Danny usually drops us a line if he knows he's gonna be absent."

Jazz didn't miss a beat. "He's had a rough morning. I'm sure you understand."

"Mm-hmm," Sam fixed her with a curious gaze. "You were telling Lancer about some sort of research trip?"

"Oh, that. Well, Mom and Dad got permission to do paranormal research at a haunted hotel, so Danny and I get to go along for the ride. Neat, huh?" Her smile became almost impossibly brighter.

Sam and Tucker blinked. "Neat?" they echoed, confused and now very suspicious. Jazz Fenton, Danny's high-strung skeptic older sister, happy about missing a week of school just before finals to spend a week at a haunted hotel? _Something_ was definitely up.

Jazz was all too aware that she'd overplayed her hand. "Oh!" she exclaimed, looking in surprise at her wrist. "Would you look at the time? I've got a couple more teachers I need to talk to before class! See you guys later!" And with that, she quickly darted down the hallway.

Sam and Tucker exchanged a thoughtful glance.

"She's being evasive," Tucker said.

"No, really?" Sam drawled.

"And she's nervous about something," he said.

"Since she doesn't have a wristwatch to tell time with? Obviously," she said.

"So," he wrote himself a quick note on his PDA. "I take it we're heading over to Fentonworks after school?"

"I'm skipping out at lunch," Sam said as she put a hand on her hip.

Tucker edited his note to himself. "That works, too."

---------------------------------------------------

"Aw, Danny," Jack sat on the edge of Danny's bed, rubbing his son's back comfortingly. "I'm sorry you're not feeling well today."

"How can I be feeling well?" Danny murmured, his tone depressed. "I'm gonna die."

"Now, son, I know it feels you're gonna die when you're sick. It's all that negative ghost energy; it blocks positive life energy from getting to your hurts and helping you feel better."

"I'm not just gonna die, but I'm gonna be completely wiped out of existence."

"But that's no reason to get all melodramatic! You just need to get some rest. I'm sure you'll be back to normal by tomorrow!"

"You know, I don't think I'd mind so much, except I know it's gonna to happen."

"And even if you aren't feeling better tomorrow, you can still rest in your bed in the Fenton Assault RV on our way down to the Riley-Bijou!"

"There's just something incredibly depressing about knowing you have less than a week to live."

"Just think, son---in less than twenty-four hours, we'll be on our way to the most haunted hotel in the world! Isn't that exciting?"

"Well, who knows? Maybe there's a benefit to being so thoroughly destroyed that even your soul is gone."

"We'll get to walk the halls where some of the greatest ghost legends dwell! The tragic lovers, the freedom fighters, the gangsters, the unrecognized-in-their-time artists, and more animal ghosts than you can shake a stick at!"

"Offhand, I can't even fake the optimism to come up with any, but I'm sure there's gotta be at least one."

"Danny, did I ever tell you how I first heard the ghostly tales of the Riley-Bijou?"

"No," Danny replied listlessly. "But I'll bet you're about to tell me."

"And you'd be right about that!" Jack said happily. He pulled a fading photograph out of his jumpsuit pocket. On it was pictured a rail-thin old man and a small, stocky child in an orange-and-black jumpsuit. "When I was but a small boy, I used to sit for hours listening to your Great-Grandpa Gregory---my mother's father, very nice man, you would've liked him, he babbled about ghosts---tell me stories about his time as the emcee at Club 1313 before the hotel was abandoned."

Danny started, his interest stirred. Alfie Gregory? _The _emcee of Club 1313? He'd known Great-Grandpa Gregory's first name had been Alfie, but he's never suspected, never thought to make the connection before.

Meanwhile, Jack continued on with his rambling. "He would me how they'd come in and find the bar a mess, littered with glasses of cool wine and beer, even though the bartender knew it had been spotless the night before at closing. And he'd tell me about the strange sounds in the night, ghostly screams and eerie howling and music coming from instruments that weren't being played. He told me about his few actual encounters with the ghosts, the dogs Sugzee and Schnookie and the gypsy cat Sun-Moon-and-Stars, and once he even saw the infamous Diego, his black cape flaring, riding his faithful stallion Toranado across the hotel gardens, searching for his beloved Esperanza. And Great-Grandpa Gregory was there on the night the Black Clover sisters died."

Danny's interest was now genuinely piqued. "Really?" he asked. "What happened?"

"Oh, he loved to tell this story---he had a real flare for the dramatic." Jack put his arm around Danny's shoulders and dove straight into the tale. "You see, it was a dark and stormy night, and a lightning storm was raging outside. It was almost 3 a.m., and the Black Clover Sisters were the next act to go on, to sing their duet , 'Opera vs. Jazz'---Donna sang Opera, Bella sang Jazz. Now, the sisters had each done a solo song earlier in the evening---Donna sang 'I'm in the Mood for Love', Bella sang 'It's De-Lovely'---so their final number of the evening was always a duet. Anyways, Bella was there, but there was no sign of Donna. Bella asked Great-Grandpa Gregory to stall while she searched the club for her sister, since it really wasn't like Donna not to be right on time for a number. It was usually Bella who would slide in just before they were supposed to go on.

"So, Bella searched Club 1313 for Donna, but she couldn't find her. Thinking she might've gone down to go get some fresh air from the hotel gardens, Bella told Great-Grandpa Gregory to let the next couple acts go while she went down to the lobby to check. She said, "Be back in a flash, Alfie." He said, "Back in a flash, or with a flash?", and she laughed a rich, beautiful laugh and said "I'll surprise you," as the doors to the service elevator closed her inside.

"Now, the big complaint everyone had with the service elevator was that it was slower than molasses. Sophie Barker used to joke that she could shave her legs before she got on and after she got off she'd have to shave them again, it took so long to go between floors. So when Bella hadn't shown up fifteen minutes and three acts later, no one was really surprised. And _that's_ when it happened"

Danny was completely engrossed. "What?"

"Lightning, son. Lightning struck the top of the hotel. The lights flashed and went out, and for several moments the club was completely pitch-black. A magnificent, roaring crash coming from the service elevator shaft echoed through the building, and then the lights flickered dimly back to life. For a few minutes, everything was chaotic and confused, and then the hotel owner, Mr. Riley, asked where Bella and Donna were. Not knowing where Donna was and fearing Bella may have been in the service elevator when the lightning hit, Mr. Riley and Great-Grandpa Gregory and Bonjangles and a bunch of other people rushed down the emergency stairs. Now, the emergency stairs for the upper floors ended at the far end of the lobby, so they had to exit the stairwell and cross the lobby to get the stairs that led to the basement, where the service elevator would've crashed.

"When they got down to the lobby, they were horrified to find Donna, dead from three sharp blows to her head, laying in a pool of blood in front of the main elevator. Not twenty feet lay the body of Donna's latest boyfriend, Georgio Giovanni, aka conman George Gardaner, dead from a bullet to his temple. Beside him lay a pistol and a silver scorpion-tailed-tipped cane. He'd killed Donna, probably because she'd figured out he was a phony, and then he'd killed himself so he wouldn't have to answer any questions.

"As they called the police and gazed sadly at Donna's dead body, they wondered how they were going to tell Bella that her sister was dead. And then dread gripped their hearts, because if Bella wasn't down here in the lobby, and she wasn't up in Club 1313, that left one place that she could have been: the service elevator. Mr. Riley and Great-Grandpa Gregory rushed to the stairs to the basement, and they were followed shortly thereafter by the police.

"When they got to the service elevator, the doors were jammed shut. It took them hours to pry the doors open just a crack bigger than the width of a really thick book, and they found the elevator cable had snapped and that the elevator car had jammed itself lopsided in the shaft in its probably dramatic plummet down. A slow trickle of thick, red liquid dripped from the lowest corner.

"They used crowbars and broomstick handles to hit the outside of the elevator car, screaming out Bella's name and begging for her to answer them, but she never did. She was gone the moment the elevator car had stopped in its awkward position.

"Now, there is a major structural problem with the Riley-Bijou, Danny. Its main support points for the upper floors are the two elevator shafts, the one for the main elevator shaft and the one for the service elevator shaft. They tried for weeks on end, but they couldn't get into the service elevator shaft to retrieve Bella's body. They found out that they'd have to demolish the entire back half of the hotel to get to her. And at the end of the day, Mr. Riley was a miserly, stubborn old man, and he said that Bella could just stay and rot in that elevator car, because there was no way in hell that he was going to destroy part of his beautiful hotel for some raven-haired nightclub slut."

Danny did a surprised double-take. "He really said that?" he asked. He'd never heard about this before.

"Great-Grandpa Gregory heard it from the man's own mouth, and let me tell you, that was _not_ the right thing to say. Sophie Barker left that day, and Bonjangles was on the next available flight to New York; he decided then was the time to return to his Harlem Renaissance roots. Great-Grandpa Gregory accepted the next job offer he got, and until the late 70s he was the host of the Reeltime Movie News program on the radio. All the talent of Club 1313 left, and because they all left, the hotel failed, and Mr. Riley found out that karma comes back to bite you really hard in the posterior, because he died, homeless and penniless, on a street corner somewhere in San Francisco, all because he didn't want to renovate part of his hotel to get Bella out of the elevator."

"Wow…," Danny murmured, trying to take in all the little details.

Jack gave a wistful sigh. "I remember begging him to tell me his stories over and over again, and I even remember asking him once if he'd take me there and show me everything. But he shook his head, and told me it was better to leave the ghosts alone, and said that Bella might come after us if he went back."

Danny frowned. He thought that was an odd thing for Great-Grandpa Gregory to say. Unless…

"Dad?" he asked. Jack looked down at his son thoughtfully. "Dad, how upset do you think Bella must be about being left in the elevator car?"

Jack laughed. "Upset? Why, I'll bet she's furious! And _that's _why we're going to be well-armed while we're doing research in the hotel. That's the reason so many people have died there since the hotel was abandoned, you know. They assumed that the ghosts weren't dangerous, that the ghosts wouldn't attack them, and that's where they tripped up. But rest assured, Danny, we'll be safe---we're prepared to study _and_ fight!"

"Jack!" Maddie's voice called up the stairs. "Could you come help me charge the plasma blasters, please?"

"Coming!" Jack called back. He pat Danny's back. "Now, you try to get some rest. We've got a big day ahead of us tomorrow!" He got up and walked out of Danny's room, closing the door as he left.

"Yeah, right," Danny sighed. "Like I'm really gonna sleep after a story like that…"

He lifted up his wrist and studied the black clover once again. "Well," he sighed. "At least I know who the Riley-Bijou Wych is, now."

-------------------------------------------------

"Do you ever worry about falling to your death when you climb up here without a ladder?" Tucker asked Sam as they scaled the outside wall of Fentonworks to get to Danny's window.

Sam shrugged. "Not really. We've done it so many times, I can't see us unintentionally falling from this height anymore."

"I hear you, but---" Tucker started to reply, then looked perplexed. "Hey, don't you ever worry about people looking up your skirt?"

Sam's expression darkened. "_Excuse_ me? This'd better be a hypothetical question."

"I'm just saying, what if some guy were walking down the street and happened to look up and see up your shirt while you were climbing up here? Aren't you worried about that?"

"I _wasn't_," Sam growled, a deep blush rising to her cheeks. Carefully freeing one hand to press her skirt against her body, she edged the final few feet to Danny's window one-handed.

Now Tucker was really confused. "You mean it never crossed your mind before?"

"Shut up, Tucker," Sam said as she tapped lightly on Danny's window.

"I mean," Tucker had a problem with 'shutting up', "I know you wear the same thing almost everyday---I do, too---but are you trying to tell me that you've never even suspected---"

"I said, '_SHUT UP, TUCKER_'," Sam snapped in annoyance. She tapped on the window again. When Danny didn't appear to open it, her expression turned concerned. "This is strange," she said. "Why isn't he coming?"

"Maybe he's as sick as Jazz said?" Tucker offered as he adjusted his grip on the side of the house with almost disastrous results.

Sam peered in through the window. "He _is_ in bed," she murmured thoughtfully. Deciding to try something else, she pried at the edge of the window open it. "Come on, Tucker, gimme a hand here."

"I'm barely holding on here as it is---why couldn't we use a ladder again?"

"Because we're supposed to be in school, remember?" Sam, with a little help from Tucker, finally pried open the window enough to get a good grip on the edge. The window slid open easily, and they climbed in, Sam exceeding more graceful than Tucker, who caught his foot on the sill and fell noisily to the floor. Sam rolled her eyes good-naturedly, then turned her attention to the quiet boy laying on the bed.

Danny was dozing, completely oblivious to the world around him. Sam looked down at him in concern. Danny was a generally a light sleeper, easily stirred and awakened by small noises; it was one of the reasons he lost so much sleep while ghost hunting. He must have been exhausted to be able to ignore not only the tapping on his window, but their less-than-silent entrance. Gently, she put her hand on his shoulder and shook him gently. "Danny?" she softly called. "Danny?"

Danny's eyes scrunched up in protest, not wanting to open, but a moment later fathomless blue eyes opened to see her gazing down at him. He looked back, almost in confusion. "I know you," he said dazedly.

Sam grinned kindly at him. "Well, I'd hope so, Brighteyes." She sat down on the floor and leaned against the bed so she could talk to him at eye level. "What's up, Danny? Jazz told Lancer you'd gotten food poisoning."

Danny raised an eyebrow. "Is that the story she came up with?" he mused thoughtfully. "Eh. I guess it's better than---" He seemed to want to go on, but for some reason decided against it. Sighing again, he nestled down further into his pillows.

Tucker leaned over the two of them. "Jeez, ghost boy, you're pale today," he said, his brow creasing in concern. "I mean, really pale. Paler than usual, even. What's the matter?" Something dark caught his eye. "What's that on your wrist?"

Reluctantly, Danny turned his wrist out to let them see it in a better light. Sam gave a sharp gasp at the sight of the hideous, almost pure black bruise. "Danny! What happened?" she demanded, taking his hand in one of hers and carefully examining the mark with feather-light touches with the other.

Danny wondered, absently, whether Sam knew she was sending little shockwaves shooting up his arm through the injured skin. Deciding she didn't, he thought it better not to inform her---it didn't really hurt, for one, and if he said something she might let go of his hand, for the other. "I'll be all right," he said. "It was just a ghost."

Tucker turned his head this way and that; somehow, the bruise actually seemed to be shaped like something. "Weird," he said, "It almost looks like…I dunno, like some kind of flower."

"Yeah," Danny said. "Weird, huh?"

"Very," Sam confirmed. She ran her thumb over the bruise, and Danny gave her hand a hard squeeze as he gasped in pain. "Sorry," she said, drawing her hands away from his.

" 's okay," he sighed, immediately missing the warmth of her hands.

Tucker, sensing an awkward moment between his two best friends that frankly he didn't want to be a part of, jumped in to steer the conversation. "So, Jazz was saying that you guys are going on a trip to a haunted hotel?"

Danny nodded. "Yeah. To the Riley-Bijou Grand Hotel, the most haunted hotel in the world. It's my dad's boyhood dream to do research there, and the society that maintains the property finally gave him and Mom permission. He's totally psyched about it."

"Cool!" Tucker said. "Sounds a lot better than spending the next week studying non-stop."

"Studying?" Danny frowned in confusion.

"For finals," Tucker reminded him. "C'mon, man, don't tell me you actually forgot year-end finals are in two weeks."

Danny nestled further into his blankets, to try to make himself seem smaller. "Actually, I did," he murmured into his pillow, embarrassed.

Sam chuckled. "Well, then it's a good thing Jazz is in charge of making sure you guys get your studying done. She was asking Lancer for your homework for the next week."

"Really?" Danny asked, unamused. "I'm curious as to how I'm gonna get it done."

"What do you mean?" Tucker asked, given him a 'are you serious?' look. "You pull out your textbooks, read the material, and do the assignment, just like you usually do at the kitchen table. Man, whoever you fought last night really scrambled your brain cells." That comment earned a glare from both Danny and Sam.

"While not wholly agreeing with Tucker's assessment of your mental state," Sam sharpened her glare at Tucker, then softened her expression as she turned back to meet Danny's eyes. "I have to admit, you _do_ seem strangely out of it."

Danny gave her a weak shrug. "I'm just tired."

"We should let you get some sleep, then," she replied crisply. Patting his shoulder encouragingly, she said, "We'll get together sometime tomorrow to talk some more, okay?"

Danny shook his head. "Can't. Dad's promised pull-out is at four, which means we'll actually leave here about six."

"Six _A.M._! On a _Saturday_!" Tucker was completely aghast. "Is he nuts!"

"No, just obsessed," Danny sighed. "Very, very obsessed."

Sam looked thoughtful. "Well, then, I'll call you tomorrow morning on your cell phone, okay?"

"I---" Danny wanted to tell them everything, about the letter and the bruise and the Black Clover Sisters and the Riley-Bijou Wych and how he wasn't coming back…but he couldn't. He couldn't do that to Sam and Tucker. Especially Sam. He sighed again. "Okay."

-----------------------------------------------------

To be continued…


	6. CheckIn at the RileyBijou

A/N: I'd be willing to bet money that most of you are uncomfortably familiar with Murphy's Law, which states that if anything can go wrong, it will. I'm curious, however, as to whether many of you are familiar with the Extended Murphy's Law, which states that, if a series of events goes wrong, they will do so in the worst possible sequence. And that's about the most I'm willing to tell you guys about why I haven't updated in a little over a month.

I _do_ apologize for the delay, though, and promise the next few chapters will be up in a timely fashion. I actually hope to have the entire thing up before Christmas, but I may have to settle for before New Year's. We'll just have to see what happens.

All characters and objects not from the series are mine. All characters from the series are Butch Hartman's.

All mistakes in the Spanish language are my own. Having never taken the language and not knowing anyone who speaks it fluently, I translated using a English-to-Spanish dictionary and five long paragraphs explaining sentence structure, so I know there are mistakes. If there's anyone willing to help me out, drop me a line!

Fair warning; _long_ chapter ahead, filled with _lots_ of _important clues_. Please note the previous _italics_.

As always, please read, review, and enjoy!

**Black Clover**

Chapter 5: Check-In at the Riley-Bijou Grand

True to Fenton Family Tradition, when four a.m. the next morning rolled around, the only family member _not_ ready to hit the road was Jack, who (as usual) had forgotten to pack the night before, when everyone else did. This was a standard Fenton Family Trip routine, one so consistent and reliable that Jazz---who (as usual) had been awake, dressed, and ready to go at the appointed departure time---didn't even bother rousing Danny from his much needed (but unfortunately restless) sleep until shortly after six, when Jack said he was finished packing and Maddie proceeded to list off items he needed for the trip (rubber gloves, deodorant, clean underwear, etc.) which he, not surprisingly, hadn't thought to pack. The family finally left Fentonworks roughly a quarter to seven, with Jack ignoring speed limits, red lights, and certain laws of physics in an ultimately futile attempt to make up time.

Sam called Danny around lunchtime, just after they'd crossed the state line. They chatted about school and studying and finals---well, Sam chatted about them. Danny made various affirming or negative noises low in his throat and mumbled 'yeah' or 'nah' at direct questions. Sam obviously found this lack of words annoying, but seemed content to chalk it up to Danny's mysterious tiring illness and didn't rib him about it. The conversation (such as it was) was relatively short---Sam had little interest in having a one-sided conversation with herself over a phone line, and despite the best efforts he could currently muster Danny still couldn't bring himself to tell her he wouldn't be returning from this trip. It was probably for the best---such news was not best heard over a cell phone connection. It probably wasn't best heard coming after the fact from Jazz, but Danny knew it was entirely too late to alter that scenario and decided to let Jazz worry about it. Sam reminded Danny to study for his finals, Danny weakly replied that he would, and they said their good-byes and hung up. For the rest of the afternoon, Danny stared listlessly out his window at the freeway passing by, lost in deep, uncomfortable thoughts. Jazz made an honest attempt to keep herself otherwise occupied, but spent the majority of the same time gazing worriedly at her younger brother. Jack and Maddie were slightly unsettled by the uncharacteristic quiet from their two children, but felt this was due to Danny still feeling ill and let it pass, instead concentrating on traffic and what number exit they were looking for.

The Golden Age Historical Society had arranged for the Fentons to conduct their research at the Riley-Bijou Grand with the assistance of the Doctors Ward, a husband-and-wife team of self-titled paranormal historians who also had ample experience in ghost-tracking, ghost-hunting, and ghost-fighting. The Fentons and the Wards had exchanged polite phone calls, agreeing to the arrangement and carefully trying to gauge each other's enthusiasm for the work. They all agreed to meet up in the huge parking lot of Louie's Pit Stop at Nova Linda, a popular truck stop roughly an hour's freeway drive from the Riley-Bijou Grand. The Fentons were a little over two hours late, and pulled off the freeway into the parking lot just after six p.m., when Louie's parking lot was filled beyond legal capacity with loaded semis stopped for a bite to eat.

"Oh, great," Jack growled, his mood at getting a late start having not improved as the day had gone by. "There've got to be a million semis parked here! Just how the heck are we supposed to find them in this mess?"

Danny stared out his window. "There they are," he said, pointing to a motor home parked next to a particularly grungy-looking semi.

Jack blinked in surprise. "What?"

"Are you sure, sweetie?" Maddie asked, craning her neck to see just where exactly Danny was pointing.

Danny studied the motor home. It was huge---he guessed about forty feet long by ten feet wide by just a little less than fifteen feet high. It was black and silver and shiny, and a pale green ghostly horse was painted running along its side. The words

_Ward Paranormal Assault Vehicle_

'_Circe'_

_Dr. T. Ward & Dr. B. Ward_

_Paranormal Historians_

'_Not Seeing Is Believing'_

were clearly written in bold lettering beneath one of the windows.

"Call it a hunch," Danny said mildly.

As Jack pulled the RV up alongside the motor home, the motor home door opened and out stepped a tall, broad-shouldered man with sandy-colored hair and a neatly trimmed beard and moustache. He wore a black cowboy hat, a mid-calf length duster, jeans, and a pair of Doc Martens outfitted with spurs. He was followed by a petite, slender woman with dark red hair, wearing a long sleeveless black dress and a sheer black poncho. The pair waved jovially at the RV's occupants as the vehicle came to a stop.

"Hey, there!" the man called out cheerfully.

"Jack and Maddie Fenton, we presume?" the woman said cordially.

Jack smiled as he jumped out of the RV's driver-side door. "That's us!"

"Hey! Toby Ward," the man approached Jack and extended his hand in greetings. "And this is my wife---"

"---Bernadette Ward," the woman said politely, extending her hand to Maddie. "It's very nice to actually meet you."

"Likewise, naturally," Maddie said sweetly, shaking Bernadette's hand.

"We were starting to get a little concerned," Toby told Jack. "Hitch-hiking ghosts are rampant in this area---we thought they might've given you guys some car troubles."

"_You_ were worried about hitch-hiking ghosts," Bernadette corrected her husband crisply. "_I_ kept telling you that, if there was car trouble, it would be from gremlins, since hitch-hiking ghosts aren't active before twilight."

The first meeting ice broken before it even had time to form, the four adults were quickly in deep conversation about the difference between ghosts and poltergeists and the best features to design into ectoplasm blasters. Toby also expressed great jealousy over the Fenton RV, telling Jack Bernadette had demanded that all of their ghost equipment be portable and removable so their motor home, Circe, wouldn't become a lab-on-wheels.

"_Un_believable," Jazz said in dismay as she and Danny looked on from their lingering point by the Fenton RV.

Danny chuckled humorlessly in general agreement. Suddenly he tensed, and a confused look crossed his face as he began to rub the bridge of his nose. "Weird…," he murmured.

"What's wrong?" Jazz asked, concerned.

"It's---" Danny shook his head. "It's nothing."

"You're sure?" An unfamiliar voice asked. "You _do_ look rather pale."

Jazz and Danny started in surprise. In front of them stood at tall, thin young man dressed in khakis and an over-sized sweatshirt. His loose shoulder-length brown hair haphazardly framed his face, drawing more attention to his high cheekbones and neatly-trimmed goatee. His gray-green eyes seemed to dart oddly for a moment as he continued to look at Danny, but then maybe that was a trick of the afternoon sunlight reflecting off the numerous semis around them.

"Hi," the young man said casually. "Caleb Ward, musician offspring of the cowboy and the vampire over there. Since the four of them are lost in their own little world, I thought I'd wander over here and introduce myself, since we'll probably be spending the majority of this next week in each other's company."

Recovering quickly from his surprise, Danny offered Caleb a friendly wave. "Hi. I'm Danny."

"And _I_'_m_ rather annoyed," Jazz said, crossing her arms over her chest and regarding Caleb with a dark glare. "Why'd you sneak up on us?"

"I didn't," Caleb replied coolly. "I neither meant to surprise you nor went out of my way to approach you unnoticed; therefore, I did not sneak up on you."

"He's got you there, Jazz," Danny said.

Jazz ignored her brother and continued to glare at Caleb. "Just because you didn't mean to sneak up on us doesn't mean that you didn't manage it."

Caleb gave Danny a wry smile. "Is she always like this?"

"Pretty much," Danny nodded. "But it can be endearing, sometimes."

"Perhaps." Caleb turned back to Jazz, his smile turning pleasant. "I suppose I'll have to get to know you better before I make any final judgments."

"I'll tell you right now, if this you is the typical you, _my_ final judgments won't be anywhere near as favorable," Jazz huffed, and turned away from the two boys teasing her.

Caleb chuckled. "Then I shall have to go out of my way to avail you to the contrary, Empress." He bowed to her with a flourish, and Danny tried to hide an amused laugh as he saw Jazz's ears start to turn pink---a sure sign that her face was red in embarrassment (and, Danny suspected, flattered interest).

"So," Caleb strode over and leaned against the Fenton RV to continue talking with Danny. "What'd you two have to give up to come on this trip?"

Danny hesitated before answering, then gave a guarded shrug. "Just the week before year-end finals. You?"

"My last chance for a thesis project conference before spring session ends," Caleb sighed. "So, basically, I won't know until mid-August whether I'm doing my project right, and subsequently I won't know if I'm graduating with the rest of my class at the end of August until then, either."

Danny cringed. "Ouch."

Caleb snorted. "Tell me about it."

"You're in college?" Jazz asked curiously, getting over her annoyance in favor of gaining information.

"Senior at Goldsmith Academy of Musical Arts," Caleb confirmed. "My major's in orchestral composition, with a double minor in musical arrangement and racking up enough debt to justify the term 'starving artist'."

Danny looked at Caleb curiously. "How old are you?"

"I'll be twenty-two in August." Caleb chuckled to himself. "Huh, gonna be a big month for me."

"And even though you have something as important as your thesis to work on, you still came _here_?" Jazz asked, her tone more than slightly critical. "_Why_?"

"So, Jack," they heard Toby say cheerfully, "If you guys'll just follow me in Circe up to the Riley-Bijou---"

"_Excuse_ me?" Caleb snapped loudly, glaring darkly at his father. "If they'll just follow _who_ up to the Riley-Bijou?"

Jack blinked at the young man who had suddenly materialized out of nowhere. "And just _who _the heck are you?" he asked suspiciously.

Toby looked uncomfortable and sheepish. "Pardon," he corrected himself. "You'll be following my son _Caleb_ in Circe---"

Caleb crossed his arms and scowled. "And why don't you tell our new friends _why_ they'll be following Caleb?"

Neither Toby nor Bernadette readily offered to speak.

"Why will we be following you instead of them?" Danny asked curiously.

"Because Cowboy Rocket-Scientist and Funeral-Director Vampire here got their driver's licenses suspended in 'unfortunate incidents'---" here Caleb made the ever-useful 'quotation marks' gesture "---with The Muffin Man."

"That guy was asking for it!" Toby said in righteous fury.

"And it's a story for another time, if we want to get to the Riley-Bijou before sunset," Bernadette said. "Actually, it'll probably be sunset just as we get there."

"Well, then, it behooves us to act in a quick and efficient manner, doesn't it?" Caleb said authoritatively. "First off, are the four of you going to try to do field research tonight?"

"Of course!" Jack said enthusiastically.

"Oh, no, we're not," Maddie said firmly. "If we're going to be arriving there just as the sun's setting, we won't have time to check the grounds and building for safety and potential hotspots."

"I agree," Bernadette said. "Any work we try to do tonight could be useless without proper reconnaissance."

"But Maddie…!" Jack whined.

"But Bern…!" Toby whined. "Ghosts could be active tonight!"

Bernadette put her hands on her hips. "There's over a thousand ghosts at the Riley-Bijou, Toby. You know perfectly well there's going to be ghostly activity every single night whether we're doing research or not."

"So," Maddie crossed her arms and gave Jack and Toby a stern look, "We will start our research tomorrow morning, and anything that happens tonight can be investigated later. Understood?"

Jack and Toby groaned in disappointment, but reluctantly nodded.

"And now, to solve one other issue before we get up there," Caleb said, stepping forward to stand in the middle of the group. "Where's everybody staying?"

Everyone else looked at him like he'd suddenly grown an extra head.

Caleb frowned. "Come on, guys, this is not that hard of a question."

Bernadette gave her son a perplexed look. "What do you mean?"

"Well, for the rest of this week, we're essentially divided into two camps."

Maddie raised an eyebrow at him. "Camps?"

"For lack of a better word; yes, camps. For the rest of the week, the four of you are going to be doing all sorts of intense scientific experiments and research work, right?"

"Yes…," Bernadette said, lifting a slightly suspicious eyebrow.

"Well, the three of _us_---" he gestured to himself, Jazz, and Danny, "---have studying for finals and thesis projects to work on, right?"

"Right…," Jazz said, lifting a very suspicious eyebrow.

"What are you getting at?" Maddie asked, now sharing Bernadette's slightly suspicious look.

Caleb shrugged casually. "Well, then, doesn't it make sense that the four of you bunk together so you can get your work done more efficiently, and that the three of us bunk together so that we can get our work done without getting in the way?"

Bernadette and Maddie's suspicious looks deepened. Jack and Toby, mostly quiet to this point, paradoxically looked both thoughtful and oblivious.

"Actually, that's not a bad idea," Jack said, tapping his chin.

"It's a pretty logical arrangement, actually," Toby said, stroking his beard.

"Now," Caleb mused. "That just leaves figuring out which group sleeps where."

"Ha!" Jack laughed brightly. "That's obvious! All the equipment we'll definitely need is in the Fenton RV!"

"And all the stuff we brought can be easily transferred over there!" Toby cheered in agreement.

Their suspicions confirmed, Maddie and Bernadette tried too late to stop their husbands.

"Jack, dear---"

"Toby, darling---"

But Jack and Toby were well beyond the realm of reasoning by this point.

"C'mon, Maddie! Let's hit the road and show them all the neat stuff we have in the Fenton RV!" Before Maddie could protest further, Jack grabbed her wrist and dragged her off up into the Fenton RV, Toby following with an equally reluctant Bernadette in tow, asking Jack whether the RV used an oil-, electric-, or hydrogen-based fuel source.

Left in the enthusiastic dust of their disturbingly-similar-in-personality parents were an awe-struck Danny, a now-wary Jazz, and a rather smug Caleb.

"Wow," Danny breathed, looking at Caleb in admiration. "That was _brilliant_!"

"That _was_ brilliant," Jazz frowned, glaring at Caleb out of cautious eyes. "_Too_ brilliant."

"Thanks," Caleb flashed them a pleasant smile. "I've worked hard to become so."

The Fenton RV suddenly roared to life, and Caleb motioned for them to follow him to Circe. "C'mon," he said with a laugh. "I'm assuming you're riding with me."

-------------------------------------------------

The inside of Circe, the Ward's motor home, was even nicer than the outside suggested. It's interior was tasteful and spacious, with plush cream-colored carpeting, washed maple cabinets, a pair of soft teal leather lounge sofas, and a moderate-sized flat-screen TV hidden in a cabinet just behind the driver's seat. It had a comfortable lounge area, a dinette with a small stove, microwave oven, and four-door refrigerator/freezer, a bathroom with a toilet, shower, and a washer and dryer, and a master bedroom in the back with a queen-sized bed. Jazz and Danny were amazed by the amount of sheer _space_ available in Circe; the Fenton RV was competitively small and cramped due to the amount of equipment their parents insisted on fitting in there.

Circe led the Fenton RV down the freeway, following the road exits until they reached mile marker 28 and pulled off at the following exit. Then they traveled a series of back roads for another fifteen minutes before turning onto a long, rough, ill-maintained road.

As they drove up along the side of a hill, Jazz spotted what looked like a weather-worn sign overgrown by brush. It looked particularly foreboding in the red sunset light.

"I wonder what that sign says," she mused quietly.

Caleb, his grip on the steering wheel turning his knuckles white, muttered, "'Abandon all hope, ye who enter here'."

Jazz frowned. "What's with you?"

"I don't like this place," Caleb said shortly, and refused to elaborate at further questioning.

Finally reaching the side of the hill, the road opened up and the Riley-Bijou Grand Hotel came into view.

It wasn't hard to imagine why it was such a popular place to be. It looked like a palace and a cathedral; a tall, beautiful, Mediterranean-styled building that reached boldly for the sky, its windows glinting and glowing in the fading light. It stood against the red horizon in an eerie profile, tall and proud and disturbingly quiet in its elegance, its overgrown gardens creeping out over the walls and along roads and up along the towering structure, a sinuous, almost serphantine beauty in its twisting and twining leaves and vines.

The black clover mark on Danny's wrist abruptly began to burn.

He bit back a gasp as he clutched his wrist, hoping Jazz and Caleb hadn't heard. Seeing their attention still on the Riley-Bijou, Danny quietly unbuckled his seatbelt and inched his way back towards the dinette, trying desperately to hide the small cries of pain attempting to escape his lips. He had to do something about the pain quickly, before they were stopped, before anyone _noticed_…

Using his elbow to pry open the freezer door, he shoved his arm in until he felt his fingers touch the back and closed the door around his arm. The burning intensified, at first, then, slowly, began to numb as the rest of his arm did. An extreme move on his part, to be sure, but desperate times called for desperate measures, and he didn't want Caleb knowing about the black clover mark. Not yet; not at all, if he could help it.

As they got closer and closer to the Riley-Bijou, the comforting numbness began to disappear, the burning returning in full force. His fingers and forearm otherwise cramped with cold, Danny withdrew his arm from the freezer and held it to his chest by crossing his arms. Freezing had only worked to a point, and Danny could only think of one reason why the burning had returned as they approached.

They were getting nearer to the source of the burning.

Danny tightened his arms around himself.

Caleb pulled Circe to a stop at the furthest end of the driveway he could and turned off the engine. "If I have to sleep here, I'm not getting any closer than this," he said irritably; he seemed almost as uncomfortable being here as Danny was. He opened the door and jumped the steps out, Jazz following more sensibly one step at a time. Danny lingered behind; he didn't want to get out and face the building, but he didn't want to be by himself, either. He followed Caleb and Jazz slowly, and once outside he kept one arm pressed against Circe, reluctant to even step away from somewhere he felt safe.

The Fenton RV drove up about fifty feet further, stopping by the rusted side gate to the hotel gardens. The four adults within piled out and admired the building, pointing and gesturing in excitement and wonder. Jazz walked up and joined them immediately; Caleb wandered off towards the entrance, staring up the tower with wary eyes.

Danny wanted to go to the others, to take silent comfort from their presence and to lean against his parents for support. But the burning wasn't going away; it was getting worse, his arm was starting to twitch…

And he could feel eyes watching him. Unfriendly eyes, their gaze making him shiver and bristle in engulfing, unrelenting terror. The burning intensified, getting hotter and hotter---

---and suddenly, abruptly, was gone.

Danny jolted in surprise. What had just happened? He'd been in agony less than a moment ago; now he felt fine, although admittedly more tired than he had been before.

Was it possible that whatever was causing the burning had gone away? For the moment, at the very least? It was the only thing that really made sense, but then things weren't making much sense to him lately. Maybe he'd just imagined the entire thing, his pain producing the pain he expected to feel upon his first viewing of the building that housed his destroyer.

He ran his thumb over the black clover mark. It tingled, the nerves and skin tender. So much for it being all in his head. He sighed heavily, and leaned harder against Circe, now wishing with all his might that he'd never heard of the Riley-Bijou Grand Hotel.

Jazz was waving to him. "C'mon, Danny! We've gotta get our stuff out of the RV!"

Danny nodded weakly in acknowledgement, and slowly, tentatively left the safety of Circe's side and forwards to Jazz, towards the RV…and towards the Riley-Bijou. He fought a shudder; he decided, then and there, that he shared Caleb's opinion: he didn't like this place, either.

Caleb stared defiantly up at the building looming before them, then snorted roughly and turned and stalked back to Circe.

-------------------------------------------------

"Remind me never to buy a car from that guy," Jazz said irritably as she brushed her hair.

Danny smiled. After dinner in Circe and the adults had gone off to sleep in the Fenton RV, Caleb had locked the door to the motor home and announced the sleeping arrangements for the three of them: Jazz got the master bedroom at the back, Danny got the larger lounge sofa behind the driver's seat, and Caleb would take the smaller lounge sofa across from him. Jazz had fought the arrangement tooth and nail, saying that, as brother and sister, she and Danny were better off sharing a sleeping area than Caleb and Danny. Caleb's response was that, as the only girl, she would appreciate the privacy the bedroom offered more than he and Danny would, and that's why she got it. They had argued about it for several minutes, until Caleb managed to verbally trap Jazz into saying she wanted to sleep on an actual bed instead of a sofa, thereby bringing the argument to an abrupt end, as Jazz wasn't the slightest bit used to being out-talked.

Danny's smile widened as Jazz struggled irritably with her hairbrush. Watching her and Caleb interact was definitely going to be the highlight of this trip.

"I like him," Danny said mildly. "He's so…"

"Sneaky? Suspicious? Manipulative?" Jazz offered scathingly.

"Different," Danny finished.

Jazz gave a disapproving huff. "Oh, he's _different_, all right." Frustrated with her hair, she threw her brush down onto the bedroom floor and flopped irritably onto her back. "I don't trust him. He's…_tricky_."

Danny shrugged. "Maybe he is. But, at a place like this, I think it's better to be tricky than it is to be easily tricked."

Jazz frowned. "You know, a week ago I would've thought that was an odd thing for you to say." She rolled over onto her stomach and rested her chin in her palms. "Do you think she'll try anything right away?"

Danny sighed and rubbed his marked wrist self-consciously. "I don't know. You know as much about the Wych as I do; the only thing I found out in the Ghost Zone was that I was 'doomed! Doomed! DOOMED!'" He mimicked the panicked gestures of the ghosts he'd encountered, then shrugged and sighed.

"Well, then, until we know more about what we're up against---"

"What _I'm_ up against," Danny interrupted.

"What _we're_ up against," Jazz replied in a tone that allowed no room for argument. "I don't think it's a good idea for you to go off by yourself, or at least go off without telling me where you're headed. We don't know the area or what other kinds of ghosts are lurking about, so it's better to err on the side of caution."

"Trust me, Jazz; I don't feel the slightest bit inclined to go anywhere on these grounds without someone in reaching distance. I _really_ do not like the vibes I'm getting from this place." Danny rubbed his wrist again, hiding a wince as the abused skin protested the touch. "But I won't go anywhere without telling you or Caleb."

Jazz frowned deeply. "Let's try to leave Caleb as much out of this as we can," she said. "We just met him; we don't really know yet whether he's on our side."

Danny chuckled. "I think that's a personal bias on your part," he said teasingly as he turned to leave the bedroom. "Caleb's cool. And besides, _you_ think he's cute."

Jazz blushed deep red. "I---I do _not_!"

Danny laughed again, brighter this time. "G'night, Jazz!" He slipped out of the master bedroom and closed the door behind him.

"I take it the Empress is still miffed at me?" Caleb asked from his sofa, not looking up from the stack of papers he was perusing.

Danny didn't bother to hide a smirk. "A little; but I think she's more annoyed at herself at the moment."

"Not used someone verbally matching her toe-to-toe?" Caleb asked.

"Something like that," Danny said, then blinked in surprise as he looked at his sofa. "Did you make my bed up for me?"

Caleb shrugged and finally looked up, offering Danny a small smile. "Eh. No big. I was making mine up anyways, and I figured I'd save you the trouble."

"Cool," Danny said, sitting down on the dark green polar fleece blanket that was covering his open sleeping bag. "Thanks."

"Like I said, no big. So," his smile turned impish. "Jazz thinks I'm cute?"

"_I DO NOT!_" Jazz's muffled cry of denial came through the bedroom door, sending Danny and Caleb into a fit of good-natured laughter.

-------------------------------------------------

They didn't stay up for very long after that---Caleb was exhausted from driving a motor home for over twelve hours, and Danny was tired from the burning from the black clover mark. They said their good nights, turned off the lights, and the motor home was quiet.

Danny fell into a light, restless, dosing sleep. He'd almost drift off, then he'd be jolted awake by a strange noise---an eerie cry, an odd thumping, soft hoof beats off in the distance. Every now and then, his ghost sense would go off, causing him to sit straight up in his bed and look warily around the motor home, trying to see if any ghosts had gotten inside. He tried to ignore it all, telling himself he knew this would happen---that Caleb's mom had _said_ there would be a lot of ghost activity, whether they were there or not.

After the twentieth-odd time of being stirred from wanted sleep, Danny'd had it. He wanted to _sleep_. And apparently, the only way he was going to _get_ sleep was if he got up, went outside, and did a quick patrol of the area so that he at least knew who or what was making the noises. Carefully, silently, so as not to wake Caleb, Danny slipped out of his bed, crept over to the door to the motor home, and went intangible to go through it.

Once outside, Danny trotted back behind Circe, out of line-of-sight of the Fenton RV, and switched into ghost mode. "'Kay, Danny," he murmured to himself. "Do this quick, see what's making what noise, and get back to bed before Caleb or Jazz wake up and see you're gone."

Floating up into the air, he darted up over the garden, looking carefully around corners and peering into odd holes. His search was reasonably successful---most of the culprits turned out to be animal ghosts milling about. He found a small group of ghostly dogs rough-housing by the garden wall, a stately glowing peacock shrieked up at him from its vantage point in a gnarled fallen tree, and when he floated high over the garden wall and let his eyes wander the horizon, he saw a ghostly horse and its rider cantering across the open grass.

"And _that_ explains the hoof beats," Danny said satisfactorily. "And now that I know where all the sounds are coming from, maybe I can finally get some sleep." He turned to head back to the motor home.

Something made him stop.

It was strange. He couldn't quite say why he stopped, and he further couldn't explain why he didn't just shake it off and go back to the motor home like he planned. It wasn't like he couldn't move, more like he wasn't willing to for some reason. It was a very unsettling feeling.

He looked to the Riley-Bijou Grand. The building was dark, its shadows inky black and forbidding. It looked like a great pillar placed against the sky, without any details or crevasses or even the outline of the domed skylight of Club 1313 at the top of the tower.

Danny floated closer to the hotel against his gut instinct to stay away, wondering what could possibly make it so dark that the moonlight didn't even glint off the surface of the windows. It wasn't right---it was too dark…

Wait---no. No, he didn't want to go closer. He shouldn't go closer---he shouldn't even be here. He tried to turn, to go back to the motor home.

He kept floating towards the hotel.

"No," he said sharply. "No, I don't want to go closer." He struggled to fly away, to get away from the hotel, not even to go back to the motor home, just to get away, but he _couldn't---break---away_.

"NO!" He shouted. "Stop it! Let me go!"

The response to that wasn't at all what he wanted.

Inky black tentacles suddenly shot towards him, wrapping themselves around his wrists and ankles and pulling him closer to the hotel.

Danny began shooting plasma blasts at the tentacles. "Stop it!" He shouted, his voice laced with panic. "Leave me alone!"

The tentacles tightened and wrenched him forward, forcing him into the hotel. More tentacles materialized and began to curl and tighten around him.

"NO!" He screamed. "LET---ME---_GOOOO_!" He let loose his Ghostly Wail at the tentacles, and the tentacles tightened, then trembled, then abruptly slackened. Danny took full advantage of this release and bolted away from the tentacles, flying and darting as fast as he could through the hotel's hallways and corridors. He wanted to get out---he had to get out---he went intangible and flew as fast as he could towards the wall to phase through---

---and slammed face-first into the wall at a hundred-twelve miles per hour.

He was thrown back down the hallway, disoriented, confused, and terrified. "No," he gasped, struggling to his feet and rushing at the wall, still intangible.

The wall refused to let him pass through.

"_NO!_" He screamed, frantically pounding the wall with his fists. "_LET ME OUT! LET ME OUT OF HERE!_"

The tentacles appeared at the end of the hallway, shooting out towards him to grab him again.

Danny cried out in panic and closed his eyes as the tentacles twisted around his arms once again---

There was a sudden, loud cracking sound, almost like a firecracker, and the tentacles were suddenly gone once more, replaced by the feeling of a hand grasping his arm and pulling him away. Danny opened his eyes, and saw a beautiful dark-haired woman dressed in a Spanish-styled dress running alongside him.

"_Ella le ha estado esperando; usted no debe haber venido_," she hissed to him, leading him first down one hallway, then another. "_Ella va a intentar destruirle_."

She led him past the ornate doors of the main elevators and took him to a plain, unassuming door just to its side. Pushing open the door, she fixed him with a firm look. "_Vaya hasta el final abajo de los pasos hasta que usted puede ir no más lejos_, " she said, gesturing dramatically to the floor. "_Su protector termina en la línea del sótano, usted puede escaparse con una de las salidas del servicio_." Pushing him through the door, she pulled it closed behind him, leaving Danny standing disoriented on the dark emergency stairway.

Danny didn't understand more than a few words of Spanish, but the woman's firm tone and her gesture downwards made him think there might be a way out at the bottom of the stairs. Terrified and without any better ideas, Danny flew in a panic down the stairs, passing door after door after door until there were no more stairs and only one door left. He rushed at the door, and it gave way easily.

He was in the basement. He had to be in the basement; huge furnaces and valves and hundreds of pipes surrounded him fencing him in. He heard a loud banging coming from his right. Whirling over to look, he saw the most beautiful sight he'd ever seen---an open door, hanging off one of its hinges, creaking and pounding against its frame. Danny flew through the door, which opened out into a small loading area on a hilltop down below the hotel, and flew along the ground as he backtracked up the hill to the front of the hotel. Circe still sat at the far end of the driveway, steadfast and quiet, and Danny felt an almost overwhelming feeling of relief as he flew up to Circe, switched back to human mode, and pressed himself against the motor home's night-cooled siding.

Danny leaned heavily against Circe, shivering violently as he tried to calm down. Pressing his hands to his face, he panted heavily, forcing himself to take deep breaths to slow his racing pulse. He could still feel the tentacles at his wrists and ankles, wrapping themselves around his limbs, pulling him closer---

He shook his head violently. No. He wasn't going to think about it anymore. He was going to calm out, get back in the motor home, crawl into bed and hide for the rest of the week. He wasn't leaving Circe period. Not after tonight. Not after this.

He jolted as he felt that odd feeling in his nose, like a cold wind was raking his sinuses. It was weird; he hadn't felt it before, but now he had felt it at least twice in less than a day. Maybe it was a new factor of his ghost sense…? But then, why wouldn't it just go off like it normally did?

"Danny?"

The sudden sound of Caleb's voice nearly made Danny jump out of his skin. Forcing his face into a neutral expression, he lifted his head to face the older boy.

"Hi," he said uneasily. "Sorry, Caleb. Did I wake you?"

Caleb looked at him out of slightly bleary, tired eyes. He raised an eyebrow at Danny. "What are you doing out here?" he asked.

"I---" Danny thought quickly. "I had a nightmare," he lied. "I thought some fresh air might help me calm down."

Caleb stared at him silently for a long moment, his raised eyebrow never lowering. "Really…," he murmured. His eyes darted oddly, as if he were catching sight of something just behind Danny, something only Caleb could see. Shaking his head tiredly, he motioned for Danny to climb back up into Circe. "Let's get back to bed; it's freezing out here." When Danny hesitated, Caleb's gestured became rougher, more annoyed. "Go on, get going."

Danny slowly moved past Caleb and climbed up into Circe. Caleb followed him and closed and locked the door behind them.

Danny crawled back into bed. "I'm sorry I woke you, Caleb," he said apologetically.

Caleb grunted and waved his hand in a dismissive gesture, apparently uninterested in anything that prolonged his return to his bed. Danny pulled his blankets around him, cuddled down into his bed, and closed his eyes to try to go to sleep.

"Just so you know, Danny," Caleb said quietly, "Tomorrow, I expect an explanation of how you got outside without unlocking the door."

Danny's eyes shot open. The door. The door had been locked---he'd seen Caleb lock it right after their parents had left to go to bed. And Danny hadn't wanted to unlock it before leaving, since he thought he was going to be right back.

Oh, no. How was he going to explain the door?

Danny shivered, and closed his eyes again to try to go to sleep, all the while thinking that Jazz right---Caleb was tricky, and he was sharp, and now he was on alert, unless Danny could come up with a plausible explanation for the door.

He shivered again and tried to ignore the fact that he hadn't thought ahead, that he'd brought this upon himself, that all he'd just done by lying about why he was outside was draw Caleb's attention to him, and now he'd handed the older boy a riddle to solve…

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_To be continued…_


	7. A Small Serenity

A/N: Well, it should be pretty dang obvious that I missed both my super-optimistic completion deadline (Christmas Day) and my more realistic deadline (New Year's Eve). In explanation, I offer Gattuso's Extension of Murphy's Law (Nothing is ever so bad that it can't get worse) and Gumperson's Law (The probability of anything happening is in inverse ratio to its desirability). Once again, I'd rather not go into details. Understandably, I am now a little leery of promising quick updates, as life seems determined to throw me difficult curves. So all I dare promise is this: This story will get finished. It may take longer than expected, but it shall happen.

A quick note: A lich is another word for a corpse. It is also a term sometimes used to refer to the undead, or zombies.

But anyways, on with the story! As always, please read, review, and enjoy!

**Black Clover**

Chapter 6: A Small Serenity

_The inky black tentacles were wrapped around his arms, his legs, his chest, his neck; coiled and pulsing and slowly growing tighter, and tighter, and tighter…_

_He couldn't fight…couldn't move…_

…_couldn't breathe…!_

_He could hear ghostly creatures howling and yowling and wailing around him, their eerie, mournful cries ringing oddly through the unnatural mutedness of his own ears._

_A tall, lean figure suddenly materialized before him, its features harshly blurred by his now-glassy vision. On instinct, he went invisible, hoping, perhaps, that the figure wouldn't notice him---_

_In the darkness, the figure's eyes flashed bright green, and he suddenly felt a cold wind raking against his sinuses. The figure began to laugh, and he was startled to recognize the voice as Caleb's._

"_Why even bother trying to hide from me?" Caleb's voice chided him good-naturedly. "Haven't you realized it yet? It's no use, Danny---no matter how hard you try, you can't slip past me. I can see you."_

_A great roaring suddenly filled the air, like a fire erupting violently to life. A sharp, cold, distinctly feminine laugh floated above the roaring, taunting him, mocking him, torturing him. There was a brilliant flash of almost black light, and suddenly the tentacles were gone, and he was falling through endless darkness._

_Falling…and falling…_

_Further and further he fell, crying out in agony as he felt his soul slowly being ripped away from his body, all the while hearing Caleb's words echo through the void._

"_I can see you…"_

"_I can see you…"_

"_**I can see you…!**"_

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Danny snapped bolt upright in his bed, screaming in terror.

Behind him, someone yelped in surprise, and then came the sound of several heavy objects hitting the motor home floor. Whirling around, Danny saw Caleb standing at the kitchenette counter, looking thoroughly startled. His senses still muddled in his nightmare, Danny gave another panicked cry.

"Danny, relax!" Caleb said hurriedly, trying unsuccessfully to calm the younger boy. "It's all right! You're okay, Danny! It was just a dream!"

Watching Danny's eyes roll blindly in uncomprehending, still-dreaming fright, Caleb quickly scanned the area around him for a way to wake Danny up.

A pitcher of water sitting on the counter was the most effective and most readily available. "Sorry about this," Caleb offered regretfully as he grabbed the pitcher and threw its contents in Danny's face.

Finally slammed back into the waking world, Danny coughed and sputtered and tried unsuccessfully to wipe the cold water out of his eyes, all the while trying to figure out how exactly he came to be drenched.

From the kitchenette, he heard Caleb say, "Call ya back, MJ. Later days." Something clattered lightly onto the countertop, and a moment later Caleb was at his side, gingerly rubbing Danny's hair with a towel and murmuring quiet reassurances to him.

Danny blinked up at Caleb, deeply confused. "What…?"

"You were trapped in a nightmare, and you weren't waking up," Caleb told him gently. "Water was the first thing I could think of."

"Oh…," Danny murmured quietly, feeling the first twinges of embarrassment. "Sorry…"

Caleb chuckled good-naturedly. "There's nothing to be sorry about. Don't worry about it."

Danny frowned in confusion as he finally registered Caleb's words just after he woke up. "Who's MJ?" he asked.

"My younger sister. Mary Jane. Or MJ, for short," Caleb explained patiently, letting Danny take the towel from him. "I was talking to her on my headset. She's going to school in New York right now, which should tell you how she got out of coming on this trip." He flashed Danny a wry smile. "And speaking of sisters, yours should be making a dramatic entrance in---" He looked at his wristwatch, then counted off on his fingers, "---Three, two, one…," He pointed at Circe's front door.

"Danny!" Jazz cried as she threw the door open and scrambled up the steps. "What happened? Are you all right?" She cast a dark glare at Caleb. "What did you do to him?" she demanded.

"Are you planning to blame _everything_ on me, Empress?" Caleb asked, his tone mildly annoyed. "'Cause I gotta warn you, it's gonna get real old, real fast."

Jazz's eyes narrowed. "And I'm going to warn _you_---"

"Jazz, _stop_," Danny said sharply, frowning up at his sister. "I'm fine. I had a nightmare, and Caleb woke me up. Don't freak out over it."

Jazz cast Caleb one more dark glare, then turned her attentions to her brother. Despite Danny's protests, she took the towel from him and began to roughly rub his hair dry "Did you _have_ to use water?" she asked Caleb disapprovingly.

Caleb mocked a thoughtful look, obviously still annoyed at her. "Well, I suppose in retrospect, I could've used the Cowboy Rocket Scientist's method of waking people up."

Jazz raised an eyebrow. "Which is…?"

"A blow horn blast through a megaphone at fifteen paces!" Toby crowed proudly as he trotted up the steps into Circe, trailed closely by the other three adults. He turned and grinned merrily at Jack and Maddie. "Guaranteed to wake anyone out of a dead sleep in 3.8 seconds!"

"Cool!" Jack said appreciatively.

"Oh, no, it's not," Bernadette said darkly. "Especially not on Saturday mornings."

Maddie walked over and sat down next to her son. "We heard you screaming all the way outside, sweetie," she said as she began to rub his back comfortingly. "Was it a bad dream? Are you all right?"

Danny nodded mutely and leaned against his mother, partially for comfort, and partially because Jazz's hair-drying was getting a little rougher than he liked.

"I can't wait to show you what this baby can do!" Jack said enthusiastically to Toby as he held a device Danny recognized as the Fenton Ghost-Finder proudly aloft.

_Oh, no, _Danny cringed. _I thought they left that at home!_

"I can't believe I almost left you at home!" Jack said to the Ghost-Finder, petting it affectionately. "How could I have, since you can find any ghost, anywhere! All I have to do is turn it on---" He flicked the switch on, "---and voila!"

"_Ghost detected_," the Fenton Ghost-Finder said, pointing directly at Caleb, who for his part only raised an eyebrow at the device. "_You would have to be a complete idiot not to see---_" The Ghost-Finder suddenly fell silent; whatever it had detected was gone.

"Curses!" Jack exclaimed. "I thought I had it fixed!"

"I doubt there's anything wrong with it," Caleb said mildly. "It was probably detecting one of the animal ghosts milling about."

"Huh?" Jack blinked, as if he were surprised Caleb was there. "Oh. Yeah. Probably," he muttered dismissively as he began to smack the side of the Ghost-Finder. "I hope this thing isn't on the fritz again…"

Toby peered curiously at the Ghost-Finder. "Maybe it's having trouble focusing on ecto-signatures, what with so many ghosts around. After all, at the end of the day it's only a computer. May I see?"

"Sure," Jack said, handing the device over to Toby, who studied it with great interest.

Bernadette, having walked back to the kitchenette to put the coffee on, looked down at the floor in confusion. "What are all of these dishes doing here?" she asked.

"Oops," Caleb said as he darted over and began picking up the dishes he'd dropped earlier, when Danny had startled him. "Sorry. I was having issues a minute ago." The dishes clattered softly together as he gathered them up.

Bernadette knelt down to help him. "Well, at least none of them are broken."

"Does this work on the same basic principals of a solar wave barometer?" Toby suddenly asked about the Ghost Finder.

"Somewhat," Maddie said. "We used the barometer as a starting point, and then combined it with a magnetic field gauge."

Toby nodded thoughtfully as he fiddled with some of the switches. "For the temporal flux caused by ecto-waves, I'm guessing." He fiddled with a couple of switches. "Well, then, maybe if we re-calibrate the ecto-wave sensors, then the minor blips would be filtered out of the detection field."

Jack looked doubtful. "You really think that would work?"

Toby shrugged. "Theoretically, anyways. It'd work with solar wave barometers."

"And he would know," Bernadette said with a proud smile as she stood up and walked over to her husband. "After all, the solar wave barometer was one of Toby's first major patents for NASA."

Danny wasn't really following any of this, but he took their techno-babble to mean that they had probably just figured out a way to make the Fenton Ghost-Finder that much more efficient. _Oh, **that's** good news_, Danny thought with another cringe.

Jazz, however, was completely floored. "Wait---_what?_" She gaped at the adults in disbelief.

"They're going to re-work the detection settings so that everything but the larger ghosts'll be filtered out," Caleb offered the English translation of the techno-babble. His suspicions confirmed, Danny's cringe became an all-out grimace.

"Not that!" Jazz snapped at him, then turned back to their parents. "I mean---the Solar Wave Barometer at NASA? The gauge that measures the intensity of solar storms on the sun's surface? You made that? _You're really a rocket scientist?_"

"Well, yeah," Caleb said, as he set the dishes on the kitchenette counter. "What, you thought I called him 'Cowboy Rocket Scientist' just for kicks?"

Toby sighed wistfully. "Ah, yes, those long ago days," he mused with a smile. "Yes, Jazmine, once upon a time, I was a rocket scientist with no fewer than eight patents to my name."

"And then," Caleb sighed deeply and nowhere near as wistfully, "One day, when I was in junior high, my Old Man decided his true life calling involved ghosts, abruptly retired, and re-titled himself a paranormal historian." He sighed again and muttered, "As if puberty wasn't hard _enough_…"

"But enough about that," Toby shrugged dismissively, giving the Ghost-Finder back to Jack and turning his attention to over to Danny, "So, was the Lurker chasing after you?"

One of the serving bowls clattered roughly as Caleb placed it down on the counter. "Dad…," he said in a warning tone.

Danny gave Toby a confused look. " 'The Lurker' ?" he repeated.

"A Lurker is a shadow creature born from the deepest hate of a lich," Bernadette helpfully quipped off a textbook definition for the Fentons.

"Caleb used to dream about them all the time when he was younger," Toby went on, obvious to the fact that Caleb was now digging irritably through one of the kitchenette drawers. Instead, he made a teasingly scary face at Danny as he wagged and wiggled his fingers up by his eyes. "It looks like a great shadow, darker than the blackest night, and doesn't reflect even a sliver of light," here Danny felt himself begin to pale, "With hundreds of inky tentacles that reach out to pull you---_OW_!" His hands flew to the back of his head as he rubbed the spot where a small but very heavy egg-timer had hit him.

"_Dad_," Caleb snapped as Toby turned to give his son a 'what the heck'd you do that for?' look. Caleb's glare was almost murderous. "Stop it. _Now_."

Toby blinked, then his eyes flashed in comprehension. "Oh, right," he murmured as he looked back over at Danny. "Just woke up from nightmare. Probably doesn't need to hear about the Lurker right now."

Caleb rolled his eyes in annoyance. "Ya _think_?"

"Sorry 'bout that," Toby said to Danny, who had paled considerably at Toby's vivid description of a Lurker. "I get carried away real quickly when it comes to ghosts and ghoulies and things that go bump in the night."

"And yet you wonder why I never wanted to take you on my Squirrel Scout camping trips." Caleb shook his head and sighed again, the gestured at the serving bowls he'd filled. "Anyways, all, breakfast's on. Mixed fruit salad, vanilla yogurt, and granola crumbles. You want something else, you're making it yourself."

"You fixed us breakfast?" Maddie asked, touched by the gesture. "Caleb, that's so sweet of you!"

Caleb laughed as he filled a small bowl with yogurt. "Don't give me too much credit, Mrs. Fenton---I only did it because I know that once the four of you get to work, you probably won't stop to eat unless something's handed to you---speaking of which, Danny? Do you want your fruit salad and granola mixed into your yogurt, or do you want to nibble at them separately?"

Danny shifted his weight uncomfortably. "Mixed's fine," he mumbled, though privately he wished he could pass on breakfast altogether, since he still had no appetite and forcing himself to eat wasn't helping much. Of course, he knew that if he even tried passing on a meal everyone else would gaze at him in concern, and he really did not want that kind of attention.

When he was passed his bowl, he offered Caleb a quiet 'Thanks' and proceeded to put a small spoonful into his mouth. He was sure if tasted wonderful; too bad if felt like he had shoved a gob of wet paste in between his tongue and the roof of his mouth. Determined to keep up the charade, he forced himself to swallow and had another spoonful.

---------------------------------------------------

"I can't _believe_ I let them talk me into this," Caleb growled irritably as he pulled on a pair of insulated gloves and a heavy ski jacket in Circe's bedroom.

"Am I missing something?" Jazz asked as she looked at the heavy cloak Caleb had handed to her. "It's eighty-something degrees outside. Why are we preparing for an extended Antarctic field expedition?"

"Because it's eighty-something degrees---_outside_," Caleb replied darkly. "Which means inside the hotel is gonna be a _lot_ colder, and I don't mean like over-efficient air-conditioning cold. I mean, turns-boiling-water-into-snow-when-thrown-in-the-air-and-freezes-the-very-blood-in-your-veins cold."

Hesitantly, Jazz pulled on the cloak. "You know, it's scientifically impossible for a building to be more than twenty degrees cooler on the inside without the assistance of a central air conditioning unit."

Caleb gave a hollow laugh. "Spoken like one of the truly uninitiated."

Jazz frowned deeply as she fastened the cloak's clasp. "You know, your mood's gone downhill considerably in the last twenty minutes."

"I told you before: I _don't_ like this place," Caleb snapped at her.

"Then why'd you _come_?" She demanded.

"Because, apparently, I'm an _idiot_," he drawled back.

Danny wisely chose to stay out of the 'discussion' and instead focused his attention on pulling on his own gloves and jacket. He could tell instinctively that trying to jump in and play peacemaker with these two was a lost cause and the best thing he could think to do was to stand back and let them work it out between themselves. Besides, the novelty of watching Jazz argue with someone who was willing to argue back had yet to lose its amusement factor, and he figured he'd enjoy it while he could.

Their parents had insisted that the three of them accompany them on their initial tour of the hotel, so that they could 'help out' if they 'needed to'. None of them had wanted to; he personally wanted to curl back up in his blankets and hide for the rest of the trip. Of the three of them, though, Caleb had fought the hardest to be kept completely out of the ghost research. He had no intentions of being dragged through a place he didn't want to be 'just in case' he had to 'help out' with research he didn't want to do. He had held out for well over an hour, but he finally caved when Toby and Jack's shameless begging made it impossible to work on his thesis project (which, of course, was the only thing he really wanted to do).

Danny sighed as he struggled with one of his gloves. When their parents had left Circe to go get ready to head into the Riley-Bijou, they had been talking about how the most active ghosts were some of the most malicious ones, and how they weren't typically active until after dark.

_The most malicious ones…_Danny couldn't suppress a shudder.

The Riley-Bijou Wych. She'd set the Lurker on him; he was certain of it. She'd coaxed him closer and let the Lurker do the rest. It had all nearly ended last night, because he'd let his impulsiveness get the better of him. Hadn't he promised Jazz he wouldn't wander off by himself, or at least not without telling someone? And _what_ does he go out and do, right off the bat? He could've kicked himself for being so stupid, but Jazz would've asked him why he did that and, quite frankly, he didn't want to answer a question like that in front of Caleb.

Danny fought down another shudder. Caleb---he didn't know _what_ to think of Caleb. Personality-wise, Danny liked him: he was a laid-back, easy-going, fun-loving musician who happened to completely understand the techno-babble of his decidedly weird parents (although he knew he himself was not one to talk). But Caleb was also incredibly sharp and keenly observant---Danny was amazed at how well he took in information and remembered small details.

Like the door. Who else in a half-asleep fog would have noticed something as everyday ordinary as the fact that the door was locked? He knew he himself wouldn't have remembered---or even though of---such a menial fact like that until well after the fact. But Caleb had noticed it right away, and had warned Danny that he expected an explanation sometime today.

…which was actually a pretty decent thing for him to do, really. Now that he thought about it, Danny realized Caleb could have just kept the whole door thing to himself and sprung it on Danny when he had him cornered, but he didn't. Caleb had warned Danny in advance he wanted an explanation, given him time to craft a plausible excuse. Why? Was he trying to offer Danny a way out? Was this a test? Or was it just a case of inconvenient timing---Caleb, suspecting a long story behind it, deciding he'd rather sleep than grill Danny for answers?

"Everyone suited up?" Caleb's voice abruptly jolted Danny out of his thoughts. "Okay then," Caleb continued, "Let's get this lunacy over with."

Danny quickly zipped up his jacket and had to rush to follow Caleb and Jazz out of Circe.

Their parents were waiting for them in front of the open hotel main entrance, Jack practically jumping up and down in sheer giddiness.

"C'mon, c'mon, c'mon!" He whined at the three of them. "Hurry it up! I've been waiting my whole life to go in this place!"

"And you'll probably spend the rest of your life regretting ever setting foot in this place," Caleb muttered just loud enough for Jazz and Danny to hear. "Convenient."

"Are you going to be playing soothsayer all day today?" Jazz asked irritably.

" 'Beware the ides of May…'," Caleb quipped humorlessly.

Toby pulled a heavy bag up onto his shoulder. "Everyone ready to go in?"

"Are we ever really ready to walk blindly into the monster's lair?" Caleb asked.

Toby clapped his son roughly on the back. "Aw, c'mon, Caleb! We'll be fine! You know as well as I do that all the dangerous ghosts prefer to work under cover of night!"

"Just because they prefer then doesn't mean they're limited to it," Caleb said warningly.

"Can we go in yet?" Jack's giddiness was quickly turning disturbingly maniac. "Can we? Can we? Can we _please_?"

"Well, we're all here," Maddie said as she pulled her hood and goggles one. "So let's head in!"

"_I'm ready!_" Jack shouted, letting loose a triumphant battle cry and dashed into the hotel.

"Hey, wait for me!" Toby dashed enthusiastically after him.

Maddie and Bernadette giggled and lovingly shook their heads in an 'oh, those silly men of ours' way. Shrugging at each other in understanding, they calmly walked into the hotel after their husbands.

Caleb trudged unhappily up to the entrance, trailed by Jazz and Danny. "Careful about that first breath inside," he warned them sharply. "It's always a punch." He took a deep breath, let out an unhappy snort, and took one long, exaggerated stride into the hotel.

Danny hesitated, then slowly moved to follow Caleb, but stopped when he felt Jazz's hand gently touching his shoulder. "Danny," she said in a low, uncertain tone, "You know I'll cover for you if you want to go back to Circe, right?"

"…yeah," Danny said quietly, then, more confidently, "Yeah, I do. But---I don't want to be alone right now, and---and I know I'm gonna have to go inside this place sooner or later. So I might as well just do it now and get it over with."

Steeling himself, Danny squared his shoulders, took a deep breath, and stepped across the threshold into the main lobby of the hotel---

---where he was immediately floored as his ribcage compressed, shredding his lungs and making his heart explode from the pressure.

Or at least, that's how it felt when his ghost sense, normally a subtle tingling and a singular breath of faint blue fog, suddenly revved into super-cosmic overdrive. He slumped to his knees and tightly clutched the front of his jacket, gasping hard in a desperate attempt to fill his lungs with much-needed air. Unfortunately, the bitterly cold air inside the hotel made breathing nearly as painful as his formerly placid ghost sense (which, incidentally, was still going off---every cloud of fog he exhaled glowed faintly blue).

Beside him, he heard Jazz give a small shriek of surprise. "Oh, help!" she cried, stamping her feet rapidly in an attempt to warm them up. "It can't really be this cold in here!"

"Oh, yes it can," Caleb said unsympathetically, pulling his jacket collar up to try and conserve some of the heat in his face. "I tried to warn you."

Ahead of them, Bernadette stood in the archway just before the check-in desk, holding a digital thermostat high in the air. Maddie stood next to her, carefully recording numbers on a clipboard.

Bernadette read the thermostat screen. "Indoor air temperature's holding at 11 degrees Fahrenheit."

Maddie wrote down the number, obviously very impressed. "Amazing! That's almost a full eighteen degrees cooler than we theorized!"

"_11 degrees_?" Jazz gasped through chattering teeth. "No wonder I can't feel my toes!"

"Probably shouldn't have worn pumps, then," Caleb said mildly. Noticing Danny crumpled and gasping on the floor, Caleb knelt down to offer him a hand. "Hey," he said in a concerned voice, "You doing all right, Danny?"

Danny gave him a stiff nod. "Yeah," he panted as he struggled to his feet, with Caleb helping him steady himself. "Yeah, I'm fine," Danny repeated, "The air---just knocked the wind out of me."

Caleb gave an understanding nod. "The first several breaths'll do that. But you get used to it." He watched as Danny continued to breathe heavily. "Eventually," he added.

Trying to relax and breathe normally again, Danny decided to take the opportunity to look around the hotel lobby.

It was as grand as the hotel's name suggested. A high, magnificently arched ceiling showcased a huge open fireplace, surrounded by several plush couches and chairs. Delicately wrought stained-glass lamps stood on expertly carved marble tables, and the tall windows were hung with heavily embroidered velvet curtains and slips of gossamer silk. Art Deco-styled mirrors and vases dotted the room, and glimmers of brass winked out at him from beneath years of neglect. Everything was covered with a thick, sticky layer of dust and cobwebs.

At the far edge of the room, Jack dashed back and forth between the wall, shouting out in excitement and practically drooling from the experience of actually being in the Riley-Bijou Grand Hotel. Toby was only slightly more contained, jumping here and there and pointing and exclaiming, 'Lookit this!', 'Lookit that!', and 'Idinit neat?'.

Maddie and Bernadette wisely let their husbands flit about like madmen and continued taking basic measurements. They knew it was better for them to burn off some of their excess energy now, so that later on they might be more focused on actual research.

The two men eventually (and literally) collided together, and after jumping up and dusting themselves off, they gave wild squeals of excitement.

Caleb and Jazz, thoroughly disgusted, smacked themselves in their foreheads; Danny just stared at the two men in disbelief.

"So, which way should we go first?" Toby asked Jack.

"I don't know!" Jack said enthusiastically. "Let's let the Fenton Ghost-Finder decide!" He pulled out the aforementioned device and switched it on.

"_Ghost detected_," the Fenton Ghost-Finder said, once again pointing directly at Caleb.

Caleb raised an unamused eyebrow at the two men. "Y'know, guys, for the sheer number of ghosts in this place, that thing really shouldn't single me out every time you turn it on."

Jack sighed in frustration. "I don't get this thing---first it says Danny's a ghost, now it says Caleb's a ghost---"

"It says Danny's a ghost?" Caleb asked in surprise, turning slightly to give Danny a curious look. Danny only offered him a nervous shrug.

"Honestly, I don't know what makes it---_HEY!_" Jack yelped suddenly as the Fenton Ghost-Finder flew out of his hand and proceeded to float rapidly away down a side hallway.

"_Ghost holding Fenton Ghost-Finder_," the Ghost-Finder said, and a bright peel of childish laughter followed its statement.

"A ghost's got the Ghost-Finder!" Jack shouted dramatically. "We've got to get it back!"

"I'm with you, Jack!" Toby shouted enthusiastically. "Let's go!"

"No. Stop. Don't." Caleb said in a futile monotone.

Unsurprisingly, Jack and Toby ignored Caleb's feeble attempt to stop them and took off after the Fenton Ghost-Finder. Maddie and Bernadette followed them, hurriedly recording their first official paranormal encounter as they went.

Caleb sighed and shook his head in dismay. "Well, c'mon," he sighed again, gesturing to Jazz and Danny to follow him down the hallway. "We'd better make sure they don't hurt themselves."

Caleb and Jazz started down the hallway, but Danny found himself stopped by the peculiar sensation of something invisible pressing itself against his shins. Every time he tried to take a step, the sensation happened again. It was almost like---

"A cat…?" Danny mused out loud as he looked down at his feet. In response, a chiming laugh echoed faintly throughout the room. Small, dainty paw prints suddenly appeared and disappeared in the thick dust covering the floor, casually waltzing their way over to the check-in desk. From the top of the desk, a small puff of dust suddenly wisped through the cold, still air.

"Hello, Danny Fenton," the chiming voice said cordially from the top of the check-in desk.

Danny watched as a long, glittering, lavender-gray tail curled into existence, curving through the air like incense smoke. A sleek, furry body and slender, delicate legs followed, celestial patterns winking out at him through the thick fur. Shining green-and-gold eyes peered merrily out at him, and the ghost cat flashed him a Cheshire grin. "Or shall I say, Danny Phantom?" she asked in a teasing tone.

Danny gaped openly at the cat, his eyes wide in disbelief. "You…you can talk?" He finally managed to stammer.

"Indeed; very well, actually." The cat laughed at Danny's expression. "Why so surprised? You've encountered far stranger than myself."

"I have?" Danny asked, confused.

"You have," the cat nodded. "Number one on 'The List': an older, darker, inhuman variant of yourself." Her expression became slightly smug. "Shall I continue?"

Danny shook his head weakly. "No…no, I'd rather you didn't."

"I thought that might be your answer." The ghost cat flicked her tail, leaving a thin trail of smoke wisping in its wake, then fixed her shining eyes to his. "I am Sun-Moon-and-Stars, the 'gypsy cat' of the Riley-Bijou Grand Hotel." She flicked an ear. "Can I assume you've heard of me?"

Danny nodded slowly. "The Mysterious Fortune-Telling Cat, who holds the universe in her glittering fur." He gave her a slightly wary look. "I didn't think cats---even ghost cats---were supposed to talk."

"We're not supposed to be able to tell fortunes, either," she said pointedly. "You would very surprised at what a cat can and cannot do, Danny. Much like humans, we are quite capable of anything we put our minds to, up to---and including---mastering a foreign tongue." Her tail flicked again, somewhat impatiently. "Ah, but I'm wasting time. Come with me; you've something to do, and it won't be long before they miss you." She jumped down off the check-in desk and began to trot off towards another side hallway. "Come along, quickly, please."

"Wait---what?" Danny shook his head, wondering if the stress of the Riley-Bijou Wych had finally managed to snap his sanity. "You want me to follow you? I don't even know you!"

"I am Sun-Moon-and-Stars." The cat said impatiently. "I am a talking lavender-gray Maine Coon cat who specializes in telling fortunes. I love playing with string. And every night I wish that blasted rodeo monkey had died outside, since he takes such perverse pleasure in annoying me. What else would you like to know?"

Danny crossed his arms agitatedly. "I-I don't know! How about why you want me to follow you? No, wait---wait! How do you know my name?" he demanded.

"We share a mutual acquaintance; he's really quite fond of you." Sun-Moon-and-Stars said casually. "He's told me quite a bit about you; how you like to go bowling with your friends, your little thing for your friend Sam, how you became a half-ghost---which I found to be an immensely interesting story, by the way; I've never before heard of someone becoming a magical creature through an accident of technology. And could we possibly continue this conversation as we walk?"

Now more confused than ever---and much more curious---Danny abandoned his misgivings and began to follow after the cat, running his hand through his hair as he tried to grasp his thoughts around what she was telling him. " 'Magical creature'…?" he repeated in bafflement.

The cat's tail swished and flicked through the air. "You are a half-human, half-ghost hybrid who can switch your physical self between two forms, phase through walls, and shoot ectoplasmic blasts from your hands. To me, that suggests a magical creature. You, of course, are free to make your own judgments."

Still trying to wrap his mind around the other things she said, he focused on the most immediate thought that came to the surface. "Why does everyone think I have a thing for Sam!"

"Because you _do_," Sun-Moon-and-Stars drawled in a matter-of-fact tone. "And it's so obvious, I wonder why you put yourself through the distress of trying to hide it."

"I'm not hiding anything!" Danny snapped defensively. "And exactly _where_ are you leading me?"

"Down to the basement," the cat said casually.

Danny stopped in his tracks. "Are you out of your tiny little kitty-cat mind?" he barked down at her. "There is no way in hell I'm going down---_alone_---to the _basement_---when I know who's lurking down there!"

"You are _not_ alone," Sun-Moon-and-Stars said crisply. "You are with me, and there is nothing down there at the moment, which is why we are going there now. However, if you continue to insist on dawdling, then not only will you be sending your family into a panic looking for you, but something _will_ be down there when we get there and _you_ will have to handle it before it attacks them. Now, follow me--- _quickly_."

Danny fisted his hands in his hair in frustration. _I should just turn around right now_, Danny thought stubbornly. _I was an idiot to follow a talking ghost cat to begin with. **Why** did I follow a talking ghost cat? I mean, how **stupid** can I get?_

But still…how did she know so much about him? Who was this 'mutual acquaintance' of theirs? Why did they need to go down to the basement?

Ugh…too many questions…!

Against his better judgment, he broke into a trot to catch up with Sun-Moon-and-Stars.

-------------------------------------------------

"Are you sure this is the basement?" Danny asked, gazing doubtfully through the maze of metal pipes and catwalks and huge iron furnaces.

Sun-Moon-and-Stars made a 'tsk' sound in the back of her throat as she led him down one of the catwalks. "Of course I'm sure. I've only lived on the property for a hundred eighty-six years---I think I would know better than you if we were in the basement or not."

Danny followed her hesitantly. The catwalk didn't look structurally sound to him. "It's just---this doesn't look like the basement," Danny said. "And I was in the basement, last night."

"No, you were not in the basement last night," Sun-Moon-and-Stars said sharply.

Danny frowned. "Uh, yeah, I was. I crashed through the door at the bottom of the stairway, and it was dark and there were pipes and valves and furnaces---"

"---and an open door, hanging off one of its hinges." The cat finished his description of his escape route. "Yes, I'm quite aware of how you found your way out of the hotel last night, Danny. And I also applaud you for figuring out Esperanza's directions, since I know you don't know much Spanish besides what comes off of a Taco Guy menu. But you see, the emergency stairs by the main elevator don't lead to the basement---they lead to a loading and maintenance area located just slightly below the lobby floor, whereas the basement can only be accessed through that narrow stairway we just came down." She glared at him out of her glowing cat-eyes. "Are you hearing what I'm telling you?"

"I wasn't in the basement?" Danny guessed half-heartedly.

The cat nodded. "You weren't in the basement."

Danny sighed. Sun-Moon-and-Stars was proving to have exactly the kind of personality he expected a cat would have: pleasant enough to be endearing, but also a smarmy, condescending, wholly irritating creature.

"So, why are we down here in the basement?" Danny asked grumpily.

"I told you before---you've something you need to do." She leaned over the side of the catwalk and stared down into the darkness. "Or, more specifically, something you need to find."

Danny doubtfully followed her gaze. He couldn't see anything in the low, eerie light the basement offered. "And just what am I supposed to be looking for?"

"Let's just say, you'll know it when you see it," Sun-Moon-and-Stars said mysteriously, and suddenly dissolved into a glittering lavender-gray mist. "You might start looking for it down there," her chiming voice offered helpfully.

"Hey, wait!" Danny tried futilely to grab the cat before she vanished, but trying to grab a wisp of fog went about as well as one could reasonably expect. "Don't leave me---alone…," he sighed as he stared down into the darkness beneath the catwalk.

"Well, Fenton," he said to himself as he switched into ghost mode, "Once again, you go off by yourself in a place you know is dangerous, and now you're _surprised_ when it takes you somewhere you don't really want to be? I mean, what kind of idiot am I? I followed a ghost cat down here because she could talk. How _stupid_ can I get?" Sighing in frustration, he floated off the catwalk and flew down into the darkness.

"It'd help if I knew what I was supposed to be looking for," he grumbled as he floated cautiously past a huge grouping of furnaces. " 'You'll know it when you see it'. Oh, yeah. That's _real_ helpful." He looked casually around the darkness, cursing the fact that he didn't even know if he was looking for something big or small.

If it weren't for the fact his ghost powers made him know better, Danny would've thought the basement would be the perfect place to look for ghosts. It was dark and cold and eerily lighted, with hundreds of odd nooks and corners to hide around. The odd shapes and railings and twisted metal pipes cast strange, looming shadows everywhere, and water-damage marks streaked harshly down the gray brick walls, spreading like a spider web over the cold stone.

Examining one of the far walls, Danny found his gaze drawn to a break in the monotonous brick---a rusted pair of elevator doors, pried open just enough to slip an arm through.

The service elevator.

Danny froze. Okay. This was it. He was _so_ gone. He was gonna turn around, fly back up to the lobby, turn human again, and make a mad dash back to Circe. He was an idiot, he knew it, he now had solid evidence, and now he was going to get out while the getting was good. He whirled around in the air to reposition himself in a better launch pose.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw something glint silver. It was very faint, but he knew he'd seen it. Over there, near one of the bigger furnaces.

He floated over towards the glinting object cautiously. _Had_ he really seen something? Or was it just another trick, designed to draw him in and trap him?

Whatever it was glittered again, just a faint as before. So it was there; he wasn't imagining it.

Landing neatly by the furnace and kneeling down, he carefully ran his fingers through the thick pile of dust and dirt and soot, his eyes darting, looking for the source of the glint. He found it quickly, when it caught his fingertip on the second run-through. Carefully, he picked it up and held it up to a shaft of light to get a better look.

It was a ring. A thin, simple silver band, tarnished from years of laying in grime.

His gaze turned scrutinizing as he started to wipe away what dirt he could. Perhaps it wasn't such a simple band. Through the dust and soot, he thought he could make out distinct etchings on both the inside and the outside of the band. Curious, he slid away from the furnace and held it up to a brighter beam of light, trying to make out the design.

"You'll need to actually clean it before you can make sense of it," Sun-Moon-and-Stars said as she abruptly appeared before him, nearly making him jump out of his skin.

"Don't sneak up on me like that!" he shouted down at her.

"I wouldn't be able to sneak up on you if you'd pay closer attention to your powers," she chided him in an unsympathetic tone. "And I can't help but be sneaky; it's a rather big part of being a cat." She focused her gaze on the ring. "It'll fit your ring finger. Clean it up as best you can and wear it."

Danny frowned as he blinked down at her, confused. "Why?"

Sun-Moon-and-Stars gave him a thoughtful look. "Think of it as a small serenity; something you can use to calm yourself and to clear and focus your mind." Her eyes flashed mysteriously. "You may find it very useful when you encounter the Wych of the Riley-Bijou."

"The Wych?" Danny repeated, stunned. "But I never said anything about the---"

But Sun-Moon-and-Stars had vanished again. A moment later, Danny had a very good idea why.

"Danny!" Jazz's frantic voice echoed through the still air of the basement. "Danny! Where are you?"

"He's down here, Jazz," he heard Caleb calmly call to her from somewhere much closer to Danny. "By the furnaces."

Danny quickly switched back into his human form as his mind reeled in confusion.

How did Sun-Moon-and-Stars know about the Wych? Well, he knew she probably _knew_ about the Wych---after all, she lived at the hotel, and had lived there for quite some time---but how did she know the Wych was after him? That _couldn't_ have been a guess on her part.

And for that matter, how, as a cat, was she supposed to be able to talk, and to talk that well? And _who_ was their mutual acquaintance?

And what the heck was a 'small serenity', and how was it supposed to be of _any_ help against someone also referred to as 'The Soul Destroyer'?

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To be continued…


	8. Knowledge Is Unnerving

A/N: Ugh, I don't even want to think about how long it's been since I was able to update... --'

I've decided to set up my profile page as a FAQ page for my stories, since I haven't put anything else up there. So if you have any questions about my characters, their surroundings and situations, or you just want my opinion on something, feel free to ask!

Quick note, so I don't get this particular question: Circe's floor plan is set up so the living room/dining room/kitchenette is in the front half, the bathroom/shower stall/laundry room is in the middle, and the bedroom is in the back. The shower stall and the laundry room share one half of the middle space, while the toilet is in a separate room on the other side. When you want to take a shower, you have to close the door to the bedroom and the kitchenette/living room for privacy, since the shower stall and laundry room isn't itself enclosed. For additional privacy, it works best if you actually undress in the shower stall (It'll make sense when you read the chapter).

As always, please read, review, and enjoy!

**Black Clover**

Chapter 7: Knowledge Is Unnerving

"Y'know, we're going the wrong way, Empress."

Jazz, leading them down a dimly-lit hallway lined with faded posters in heavy frames, cast a dark glare back in Caleb's general direction. "Did I ask you for directions, Mr. Ward?" she asked icily.

Caleb gave a casual shrug. "No. But if you had, we'd've been back to the lobby by now."

"I gotta side with Caleb on this one, Jazz," Danny said hesitantly. After the earful she'd just given him down in the basement for going off by himself, "I don't remember seeing any of these posters before."

"Maybe you just weren't paying attention before," Jazz said crisply as she continued to lead them down the hallway.

Caleb chuckled and nudged Danny playfully. "You're her brother---is that Empress for 'I'm lost, but I'm not about to admit it', or, 'will both of you just shut up and quit bugging me already'?"

Danny playfully leaned towards Caleb and said, almost conspiratorially, "It's actually both, but Jazz'd never admit the first one."

Ahead of them, they heard Jazz growl in annoyance, but she didn't turn around to snap at them. Instead, she hunched her shoulders up and continued to stride down the hallway.

"So," Danny said, looking around the hallway, "Any idea where we are?"

"Mm-hmm," Caleb nodded. "We're walking alongside the theater."

"There's a theater in here?" Danny asked, blinking in surprise.

"Yep. When this place started to be frequented by studio heads and movie stars, Mr. Riley took out a whole sixteen suites to build a theater that could alternatively screen movies and stage Broadway shows." Caleb shook his head. "Amazing, isn't it? He's willing to reduce his hotel's capacity to bring in more day-trippers, but he won't renovate the back of it to give someone a proper burial."

Danny didn't have to ask Caleb what he was talking about. He knew very well that Mr. Riley had refused to shell out the money it would have taken to retrieve Bella Powers body from the elevator car where she was entombed. Fighting down a shudder, he began to look casually at the faded dust-covered posters that lined the walls. "So, are these posters of all the shows that were here?"

"No; actually, all of these posters featured the acts from up in Club 1313." Caleb let his eyes wander over the posters. "See, Mr. Riley was a businessman, Danny, and he was generally a very good one. He knew that, if people came to see a show in the theater, advertising for the acts up in the club could be done to great effect with very little effort. This tended to have the desired result of getting people to spend money to see shows in the theater, and then getting people up to the club to stay a bit longer and spend more money on booze and food and tips. Then of course, the music was always---Danny?" Caleb stopped when he suddenly realized, somewhere during his explanation, he'd lost Danny. To his relief, it didn't take much effort to find him.

Danny was standing several steps back, a casual glance at one of the dusty posters having stopped him in his tracks when he realized that he recognized the two women featured.

Carefully, Danny reached up and gingerly brushed at the thick, sticky layer of dust that coated the poster. The dust yielded easily to his touch, collecting at his fingertips like dryer lint as it revealed still-vibrant colors on the heavy paper.

It wasn't a photograph, as he originally thought, but rather a beautifully rendered portrait of the Black Clover Sisters draped in a gray, starry mist. The similarities between them weren't immediately obvious; Bella, clutching the starry mist to her ample cleavage but allowing her midriff to be exposed, with her long, thick mane of tight black curls and bright green eyes staring boldly out at the viewer, stood in complete contradiction to Donna, who gazed out at him coyly through smoky green half-lidded eyes, her knee-length, perfectly straight black hair flowing out behind her, the starry mist draped over her arms so that only a teasing glimpse of her bare shoulders and hands were visible.

As he looked, though, he could see more of the similarities. They were both tall and slim, with long, long legs and slender arms and wrists and hands. They shared small waists that curved into delicate hips, and they had obviously been well blessed by the cleavage goddess. Their faces were smooth, flawless, perfect ovals, and both had short, straight noses and wide, upward-slanted eyes framed with long, thick lashes. As he studied the pair, he was shocked to realize that they also shared the same tattoo: a small black clover. Bella's was on her chest, just below her collarbone; Donna's was on her neck, just beneath her right ear, almost blending into her hairline.

Danny stared up at the poster, a strange, mixed feeling of terror and delight stirring within him. The Black Clover Sisters…dreams in their day, a nightmare in his.

He knew one of them was the Riley-Bijou Wych.

He felt that strange cold-wind feeling start to rake his sinuses again. Uncomfortable, Danny rubbed the side of his nose, trying to make the feeling go away.

"Y'know, Danny," Caleb's voice was now a familiar one, but suddenly hearing it when he didn't expect to made Danny jolt in surprise. "You have a talent for getting yourself lost in the space of a few seconds. And while it's probably a great boon to you, I should warn ya that it's pretty dang annoying for the rest of us."

Jazz sighed irritably as she strode up to her brother. "Much as I'd hate to agree with Caleb on anything, he does have a point---you really need to stay with us, Danny."

Danny glanced nervously back at the poster, then looked down sheepishly at his feet and rubbed his marked wrist. "Sorry, guys," he mumbled. "I'll try to keep up with you."

Jazz caught the wrist motion. Frowning darkly, she fidgeted for a moment as she pondered what to do next, then took a deep, unhappy breath. "Caleb," she bit out through grit teeth.

Caleb turned and regarded her with curious eyes.

"What's the fastest way back to the lobby?" she growled, trying not to let her annoyance show (and failing miserably, at that).

Caleb casually gestured the way they'd came. "Down that way. Hang two lefts and a right and we'll come out by the fireplace."

"Then let's get going." Taking Danny by the shoulders, Jazz steered her brother back down the way they had come, muttering something derogatory under her breath about musicians thinking they know everything.

Caleb lingered behind for a moment, studying the poster Danny had undusted with dark, suspicious eyes, then turned to follow Danny and Jazz.

---------------------------------------------------

"Caleb!" Bernadette cried as they entered the lobby. Dashing up to her son, she pulled him into a relieved hug. "Where have you been? Why did you wander off like that? We turned around and saw you three weren't there and I've been going out of my mind with worry since!"

Maddie followed suit, worriedly pulling her own children to her side. "So have I, especially after Bernadette told me about last time!"

Jazz blinked. "There was a last time?"

"Yes, there was a last time." Caleb frowned. "I've told you a couple times before, I don't like this place."

Jazz frowned right back. "Well, you neglected to mention any specific reason why."

"He doesn't like to talk about it. He never has." Bernadette rubbed Caleb's shoulder comfortingly. "And personally, I don't blame him."

"What---" Jazz started to ask, but a stern, "Don't," from Maddie silenced her.

Danny wanted to ask what happened last time, too, but he knew now wasn't the time if his mother wouldn't let Jazz ask. He wouldn't have had the time to ask, anyways, since only a few awkward, silent moments later, a rank odor began to drift through the lobby.

"Ugh!" Jazz gagged, putting her hands over her nose. "What is that _smell_?"

"The smell of victory!" Jack shouted proudly as he and Toby appeared from the hallway by the front desk. They were both covered in an odd brownish-green slime, and it didn't take much to figure out they were the source of the foul stench.

Danny clamped his hands over his face. "If this is the smell of victory, I think I'll stick with defeat."

"Ditto," Caleb said, scrunching up his nose against the powerful aroma.

Jack held a familiar remote-like box up in the air. "We retrieved the Fenton Finder!"

"And we had a grand ol' time of it, too!" Toby exclaimed happily.

Bernadette gave her husband a distasteful look. "You call discovering a way to make yourselves smell worse than a septic tank a grand old time?"

"Well, you guys haven't heard how we got it back!" Jack posed dramatically as he launched into the tale. "So there we were, chasing after the ghost who'd stolen the Fenton Finder---"

"We were lagging behind, 'cause Jack kept fallin' down in excitement," Toby interjected.

"---and the ghost was going this way, and then it was going that way---" Jack mimed running down an imaginary hallway.

"Had to be one of the child ghosts," Toby said. "Seemed more interested in teasing us than anything else."

"---and soon we found ourselves in the hotel kitchen, and utensils and pans and all sorts of other things started to fly out at us---" Jack began ducking this way and that.

"I got hit in the head with a fryin' pan, Bern!" Toby said cheerfully.

Bernadette raised an eyebrow at her husband. "You needed to come to a haunted hotel to be happy about something like that?"

Jack spread his arms out wide. "But then I could see the Fenton Finder floating away, and I was all 'not on my watch, ghost kid!', and I pounced for it, and I grabbed it, but the ghost wouldn't let go---"

Toby nodded enthusiastically. "It started screaming 'Mine! Mine! Mine!', just like MJ at a Buyerly's sixty percent off sale!"

Jazz blinked in confusion. "Who's MJ?"

"Caleb's younger sister," Danny told her.

"She's in New York," Caleb added mildly.

Jazz sighed. "Lucky her."

"---so Toby and I were having a tug-of-war with this ghost, and first it was winning, and then we were winning, and then it was winning, and finally we were able to wrench it away, only to lose our balance and fell into these old barrels marked 'Salisbury sauce base' that were piled up in the corner of the pantry!"

"Eighty-plus year old stagnant gravy," Caleb groaned, waving his hand in front of his face. "Well, that explains the smell."

"Hey, no worries, all!" Toby said cheerfully. "A couple of long, hot showers and a fresh change of clothes and we'll be back to normal in no time!"

" 'A couple of long, hot showers'?" Bernadette repeated, frowning at her husband. "Toby, do you remember where you happen to be right now?"

" 'Course! We're at the Riley-Bi…jou," Toby's face fell as he suddenly realized what his wife was pointing out.

Danny thought he knew what Bernadette was pointing out, but he wasn't sure. He nudged Caleb. "Limited water supply?" he whispered a guess.

Caleb nodded. "A couple of long, hot showers today could mean no working toilets tomorrow."

"Eww…,"Danny stuck his tongue out. _That_ was not a scenario he cared to think about.

"'Eww' is right. It's going to take more than one long, hot shower to get rid of that stench," Bernadette said with a frown as she turned to Maddie. "Well, I don't know about you, but I don't relish the idea if spending several nights in a row trying to sleep while breathing _that_."

Maddie sighed. "I admit, the idea doesn't thrill me either, but what other choice do we have?"

"Well," Bernadette said, pausing thoughtfully. "I suppose we could always share Circe with the kids."

"Why, that's right!" Maddie gasped and smiled. "There's plenty of room in there for all of us to sleep comfortably."

"I don't know about that," Jazz spoke up, her voice one of uncertainty. "Danny and Caleb are sleeping on the sofas, and I'm in the bedroom---"

"Well, that's perfect, then!" Maddie said brightly.

Jazz blinked in confusion. "It is?"

Maddie smiled. "Yes! Bernadette and I can just share the bedroom with you!"

"You can?" Jazz's face paled at the idea.

Bernadette looked as pleased with the idea as Maddie. "It's a queen-sized bed. We'll all be able to fit."

Jazz looked like she was about to throw up. "We will?" she squeaked.

"Now, now," Caleb said, stepping forward with a calm, curious-looking smile on his face, "Before we do anything, might I suggest a more practical alternative?"

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Caleb's alternative was, even by Jazz's impossible standards, a stroke of genius.

In its heyday, the Riley-Bijou Grand was far enough off the beaten track that being connected to the county water system would've not only been incredibly expensive, but also would've supplied the hotel with extremely poor water pressure. Because Mr. Riley was, at heart, a miserly businessman, and because the only ground-level water anywhere near the property was a large tar spring just down the hill, there was only one option left to try. They dug a well. And happily for the hotel, the well worked.

And happily for the Fentons and the Wards, the well house was located in the hotel gardens---actually, just over the wall from where Caleb had parked Circe.

Danny watched curiously as Caleb tightened a pair of clamps around the heavy rubber hose attached just below Circe's kitchenette window, then gave it a hard tug to make sure it was in place.

"All right, guys!" Caleb shouted over the garden wall. "Turn on the water pump!"

Toby's voice floated back over the wall, "Water pump on…now!"

There was a loud groaning sound, followed by a strange, gurgling rumble. The heavy rubber hose shuddered a couple of times, then hung still as a sharp hissing filled the air. The hissing went on for several long moments, growing louder and louder then, rather suddenly, became a low, constant purr.

Caleb pounded his fist against Circe's paneling. "Alright, ladies!" He shouted to the three women inside. "Crank on all the faucets!"

"Right!" Maddie's voice drifted through the open window. A few odd pinging sounds came from inside, then Bernadette's face suddenly appeared at the window. She was smiling brilliantly. "And we have water!"

Caleb chuckled brightly. "Well, I should hope so---the hotel's natural reservoir hasn't been touched since the place was boarded up." His expression turned serious. "Now, let's keep the faucets running for about ten minutes before we take a sample---if the filters are working right, we'll all be taking hour-long showers for the duration of our stay."

Bernadette reached down and fondly ruffled her son's hair. "It's so nice having a son with an IQ of 210."

"My IQ has nothing to do with it," Caleb smirked. "My mad skills come from knowing when to think outside the box."

"To-may-to, to-mah-to…" Bernadette laughed as she disappeared back into Circe.

Danny rubbed his arm nervously as he gave Caleb a sidelong gaze. "You have an IQ of 210?"

Caleb laughed good-naturedly. "Nothing but a number on a piece of paper, Danny. Don't think too much of it."

"But doesn't that mean, y'know…you're a genius, or something?" Danny began tapping his sneaker against the garden wall.

Caleb laughed again, but Danny heard distinctly less humor in his voice. "Danny," Caleb said, a serious glint coming to his gray-green eyes, "I need to tell you this because you are the Empress's younger brother and therefore need to know this in order to get through your high school years without a nervous breakdown: things like IQ tests, the SATs, and the CATs are no indication of your intelligence or a measure of what type of success you can expect to achieve later on in life. All they do is indicate how well you retain facts about certain subjects."

"Yeah," Danny nodded in understanding, "Yeah, I know that; it's just…if your IQ's 210, then that means you…retain facts…really well?"

"For all the good it's done me," Caleb sighed, and Danny thought, for a moment, he could see something…sad…in Caleb's smile.

He didn't have long to dwell on what Caleb might be sad about, though, because Caleb suddenly straightened and said, "Now then, Danny, about how you got out last night---"

Danny's immediate impulse was to panic. Caleb knew. Caleb was a genius, he'd just proven it; of course he knew. He must've done something to blow his cover right off the bat. Maybe Caleb had seen his ghost sense go off. Or maybe he hadn't been as good at concealing the pain the black clover mark had caused him. In any case, the gig was up. Caleb knew, and because Caleb knew that meant he was probably going to tell his parents that Danny had---

"---in the future, don't climb out of the window."

…huh?

"Now, I really shouldn't preach, because I do it all the time myself, but," here Caleb reached up and tapped the edge of the long window that walled Danny's lounge-sofa bed, "Just in case you didn't notice, this is almost a six-foot sheer drop from window's edge to the ground---enough to break your arm or leg if you lose your grip and gravity takes over. Not to mention, it's always more trouble than it's worth to climb back in. So, next time you wanna go outside in the middle of the night," Caleb gave him a mysterious grin, "Just use the door, all right?"

Danny stared at Caleb for a long moment, not knowing for sure what to do or say, before finally nodding dumbly and murmuring, "Yeah…yeah, I'll do that."

"Good," Caleb nodded satisfactorily. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go heckle the Empress for the next---" he looked at his wristwatch, "---seven minutes. Mind trotting into the garden to tell the Old Men that they're to sit tight till we get the results from the water samples back?"

"…sure," Danny said weakly.

Danny watched as Caleb sauntered away, his mind reeling.

What had just happened?

-----------------------------------------------------

The water samples came back green---which, Maddie told Danny, meant the water was safe to use because all of Circe's filters were working. This was good news for several reasons: showers wouldn't have to be timed, the toilets would continue to work, the water tank could be filled before they left, and, perhaps best of all, Maddie and Bernadette were going to be staying in the Fenton RV with Jack and Toby after all (after both men showered, shampooed, and gargled heavily with Listerine, of course.).

Reluctantly accepting the fact that their children had absolutely no interest in 'helping out' , the parental Fentons and Wards left their children behind in Circe while they went back to get more basic readings done so they could officially start their research that later that night. Finally left to do as they pleased, Caleb dug out the stack of papers he was going through the night before, and Jazz buried her nose in her textbooks. She tried to make Danny sit and study with her, but Danny knew he wasn't in any mood to concentrate on schoolwork and instead opted to take one of those hour-long showers.

As he undressed in the shower stall, he found the tarnished silver ring---the 'small serenity'---in the pocket of his jeans. He only vaguely remembered putting it there; he'd been in a rush to hide it from Caleb and Jazz before they found him down in the basement. It would've brought up too many questions he knew he couldn't answer, particularly the one of why he'd gone to the basement. Somehow he didn't think Jazz would've taken the news of him following a talking ghostly cat too well. Caleb---well, Danny didn't know what to think of Caleb anymore.

Danny sighed. Caleb. What was Caleb up to? Why hadn't he grilled Danny for an answer about the door? Why had he instead given Danny an excuse for how he'd gotten out last night? It was obvious Caleb knew Danny hadn't actually gone out of the window---Caleb's smile had told him that. Did he know how Danny really left Circe? Maybe he did, maybe he didn't. Danny didn't know, but at this point he wouldn't put it past the older boy. Caleb, after all, was a genius; and geniuses tended to know a lot, including things they shouldn't know.

Shaking his head to scatter his thoughts, he twirled the silver ring around his fingertips, rubbing absently at the tarnish. What the heck was a 'serenity', anyways? Was it just the style of ring it happened to be?

No; no, Sun-Moon-and-Stars had said it might help him against the Riley-Bijou Wych---but then did that mean it was a type of shield, or was it just a sort of good-luck charm? And if it was just a good-luck charm, then what good would it really do him? Maybe it was just one of those 'symbolic things', where it didn't actually do anything but give him the confidence he needed to try his hardest.

Danny rubbed his head and moaned. He really didn't want to think about this right now. Later. He'd clean it and wear it and think about it later. Right now, he wanted to calm down and relax and not think about the ring or Sun-Moon-and-Stars or the Riley-Bijou Wych.

Putting the ring into the soap dish, Danny finished undressing and threw his clothes over the side of the stall and turned on the water. Frigid at first, the water quickly warmed and pounded against him, slowly soothing his frayed nerves. The steam curled up around him, and as he breathed it in he felt some of the tension that had been building up over the past few days begin to dispel. Tired, hungry, and nervous, the feeling of warm water cascading over his skin brought a surprising wealth of comfort to a life he felt was spiraling further and further out of his control.

-------------------------------------------------

When he got out of the shower, Danny realized that, despite his best efforts, he had thought a lot about what he didn't want to think about in the shower. And the more he thought about what he didn't want to think about, particularly in regards to Caleb, the more he realized what he really wanted was some advice on what to do about it. And here at the Riley-Bijou Grand, out in the middle of Nowhere, California, in a motor home called Circe, there was only one person he could really go to.

"So, wait." Jazz sat at the foot of her bed, trying to wrap her mind around what Danny was attempting to tell her. "You think Caleb knows something, but you don't know what he knows or what he thinks he knows or how he happens to know it?"

"I don't _think_ Caleb knows something," Danny snapped agitatedly as he paced the length of Circe's master bedroom. "I _know_ Caleb knows something. I know Caleb knows something because he's all but told me he knows something, but he won't tell me what it is he knows and I'm starting to freak out because I think what he knows is something he really shouldn't know and if what he knows is what I think he knows then I'm in really big trouble because if it is what I think he knows then---"

"Danny, stop!" Jazz sighed and rubbed her temples. "You're making my head spin!"

Frustrated that he wasn't able to coherently explain his problem to his sister, Danny fell face-first onto the bed and screamed into one of the pillows. "Jazz, I need help!"

"I want to help, Danny; I really do." Jazz leaned over and rubbed his back comfortingly. "But I'm not understanding why you're so worried about what Caleb knows."

"I'm worried, because Caleb's smart," Danny tried to explain.

Jazz frowned. "I'm smart, too, Danny, and that doesn't seem to bother you."

"But Caleb's a genius, Jazz," Danny said plaintively. "Mrs. Ward said he has an IQ of 210, and he figured out how to fix our whole limited water issue."

"Luck and common sense," Jazz said dismissively. "And all those tests show is that he has a good memory."

"Funny---that's what he said, too. About the tests, I mean." Danny mused thoughtfully. "Well, not exactly in those words, but he meant the same thing."

Jazz rolled her eyes. She wasn't all that pleased to hear that she and Caleb actually shared the same opinion about something, but she decided against running with it. "Danny, you're tired, and maybe that's making you think Caleb knows something when all he's really doing is being a smarmy, overconfident, narcissistic jerk."

Danny gave her a disbelieving look. "Am I just not seeing things about him that you are, or are you just magnifying his faults so you can justify trying to ignore the crush you're getting on him?"

Jazz laughed, but there wasn't any humor behind it. "You really need to get some rest, Danny. Then maybe you'll realize that you're worrying over nothing. I mean, after all, it's not like Caleb'll be able to figure out you're half-ghost."

Danny laughed, his tone even hollower than his sister's. "I wish I felt the same way."

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Dinner was oven-baked pizza, and the three occupants of Circe went through two whole pepperoni pizzas before they finally took a couple out to their parents, who were setting up scanning equipment in the hotel gardens. Danny managed to keep down a couple of slices, despite the fact that they tasted like sawdust to him. But with both Jazz and Caleb watching him like hawks to make sure he ate something, he couldn't just pass on dinner, no matter how little appetite he had.

They all stayed up late. Danny didn't really do it by choice, but he knew himself well enough to know that he wouldn't be able to get sleep if the lights were still on, and Jazz insisted on studying at the dining table. Danny attempted to join her, but wasn't really successful at anything other than staring blankly down at whatever page his textbook happened to be opened to, and his notebook remained blank. Caleb, for his part, sat cross-legged on his bed, shuffling through his stack of papers, jotting down notes here and there and humming quietly to himself. Jazz finally decided to call it quits about ten, and Danny happily crawled into bed. Caleb sighed, put his papers away, and turned the lights out about a half-hour later.

It was just past midnight when Danny was jolted out of a light doze by something small and furry jumping onto his head.

At first, he thought it might be Sun-Moon-and-Stars; she was a cat, after all, and cats were known to jump onto people to get their attention. But he thought better of it when he felt tiny hands pawing at his face and tugging at his hair, and heard an odd chittering in his ears. Opening his eyes, he found himself staring at a ghostly green capuchin monkey, dressed in a white shirt and chaps and a vest with a tiny star pinned on it, with a little red bandanna and a small cowboy hat that hung from a slip tie around its neck.

Even in his rest-deprived state, Danny figured out pretty quickly this was probably the Rodeo Monkey Sun-Moon-and-Stars so deeply disliked.

"What're you doing here?" he murmured, blinking at the monkey in confusion. The monkey responded by pulling his hair again.

"Okay, you---_off_," As gently as he could, he reached up a hand and pushed the Rodeo Monkey off of his head. Sitting up, he fixed the monkey with a stern glare. "Just so you know, jumping on someone's head is not the best way to wake them up."

The Rodeo Monkey leaned its head to the side, as if it were seriously pondering Danny's advice, then hopped off the lounge sofa and began to paw at the zippers of Danny's duffel bag.

"Hey, stop that!" Danny whispered harshly, making a shoving motion with his arm. The Rodeo Monkey bobbed up and down and backed away, but the moment Danny put his arm down it was back pawing at his duffel bag.

Danny pulled his legs out from under his blankets and stood up. "I said _stop_," Danny hissed, stepping toward the ghost monkey and gesturing with his arm again. The Rodeo Monkey bolted away from Danny's duffel, sprinting across the room to perch itself on Caleb's huge cargo bag. Lashing its tail, it let out an annoyed shriek.

"Quiet!" Danny shushed it. "You'll wake Caleb! And get out of his stuff!"

The Rodeo Monkey shrieked at him again as it pawed around Caleb's bag. Reaching into one of the bag's front pockets, the ghost monkey pulled out a familiar-looking handful of papers. They were the ones Caleb had been looking through every spare moment he could get away with.

"Put those down!" Danny said as he stepped towards the Rodeo Monkey, sweeping his arms out at it in an attempt to intimidate it. He didn't know what those papers were, but he assumed they were important if Caleb spent so much time looking at them. This time, though, the ghost monkey swatted back, shrieking again as it clutched the papers closer.

Danny glanced nervously over at Caleb, who shifted slightly in his sleep, but gave no other signs of consciousness. Steeling himself, Danny made a grab for the papers. "Put---those---down!"

The Rodeo Monkey let out another shriek as Danny's hand approached it, and it whirled around and phased through the wall of the motor home.

Biting down the urge to shout a stream of profanity, Danny went intangible and bolted through the wall after it. He could see the Rodeo Monkey running towards the Riley-Bijou, tossing and crumpling the papers as it went. Not holding back the urge to shout now that he was outside, Danny took off after the ghost monkey.

-------------------------------------------------

The Rodeo Monkey hadn't bugged her yet.

This worried Sun-Moon-and-Stars deeply.

You see, after almost two centuries of being trapped on the grounds of the Riley-Bijou Grand, the fortune-telling feline's (after)life had fallen into something of a predictable routine. During the day, she wandered from ray of sun to ray of sun, catching snatches of beauty sleep; night, on the other hand, was always for business. However, since the Rodeo Monkey had died in that freak stage accident in the theater, Sun-Moon-and-Stars could never get started on her work unless she'd made sure the accursed monkey wouldn't bother her. It wasn't a difficult process by any means---the Rodeo Monkey always sought her out because it enjoyed grabbing her legs and pulling her tail. A couple of rough swats around its head were always enough to ensure it would find itself other amusements for the rest of the night.

But the Rodeo Monkey had always bothered her either late in the evening or just after dark---bothering her was always the first thing it did when the sun came down. But that was hours ago, and the monkey still hadn't shown up, and its absence was more acutely felt than its actual presence.

Sitting on a windowsill on the seventh floor, Sun-Moon-and-Stars cautiously reached out with her powers, searching for the monkey. She found it easily enough---its signature was very familiar to her, after so many years---but she was startled to realize it was outside of the hotel.

Now she knew something was _very_ wrong. The Rodeo Monkey couldn't go outside the Riley-Bijou Grand under its own power; because it had died inside the hotel, it was held by the physical boundaries that had been present when it had died. It couldn't enter and exit the hotel on a whim, as she could. That meant something---or rather, a certain _someone_---had let it out.

She reached out further, and her eyes narrowed as she felt Danny's human presence. He was following the monkey; why was he following the monkey? How stupid could he get? She paused in her mental chastising as she remembered that he had followed her, too, but that was different. She was a semi-omniscient talking feline phantasma. The Rodeo Monkey was just the ghost of a capuchin monkey who had been dressed in a ridiculous outfit. But, oh, well. Danny'd be fine this time; after all, he was wearing the small serenity that she'd---

Her eyes widened as she felt around for the presence of the ring on Danny and didn't find it.

He wasn't wearing it.

He. Wasn't. Wearing. It.

"Oh, for the love of---!" She snarled to herself as she bolted from her spot on the windowsill and dissolved into a lavender-gray mist as she dashed down the hallway. Rematerializing in the ground-floor hallway by the theater, she sprinted past the dust-covered posters and rushed towards the lobby, emerging from beside the fireplace just as Danny ran through the entrance after the Rodeo Monkey, grabbing at odd pieces of paper the ghostly primate threw out behind it.

"Curse it, Danny!" Leaping up and latching her claws into his outstretched arm, she sank her super-sharp scissor-teeth into Danny's marked wrist.

Danny gave a surprised (and incredibly pain-filled) shriek. Clutching his forearm as he fell forwards, he looked at Sun-Moon-and-Stars in betrayed disbelief. "What the---!"

"You are such a _horse_!" Sun-Moon-and-Stars spat angrily as she leapt away from his arm and landed in front of him, her green-and-gold eyes narrowed darkly. Her furious expression was much helped by the red stain of Danny's blood covering her muzzle and whiskers. "When I tell you to wear a certain piece of jewelry, then you _will_ wear that certain piece of jewelry until _I _specifically tell you that you can stop wearing it! _GET IT?_"

Danny, still getting used to the concept of a cat talking to him, much less yelling at him, nodded compliantly. "Got it."

"_Good_!" She was about to launch into another tirade, this one about Danny being dumb enough to follow ordinary ghost animals, but she froze as her powers alerted her to the arrival of another (and very dangerous) presence. The ghost cat lashed her tail anxiously, then began to paw frantically at Danny's shoulder. "Switch into your ghost form. Now! Come on, _come on_!"

"Go ghost?" Danny blinked at her, confused. "Why---" Out of the corner of his eye, he caught sight of something inky-black slithering out towards him. It looked like a…

"Oh," he breathed as one of the Lurker's tentacles reached out to grab his leg.

"Hurry up!" Sun-Moon-and-Stars cried.

Switching forms faster than he thought possible, Danny grabbed Sun-Moon-and-Stars and flew as fast as he dared into the labyrinth that was the hallways of the Riley-Bijou Grand.

"Left. Right. Right. Left---your other left!" Sun-Moon-and-Stars steered him through the hallways, leading him somewhere he hoped they'd be safe.

"Sharp right." Danny clipped his shoulder as he took the turn, and bit back a sharp cry of pain as the pain shot up his already injured arm.

"She's got her shield up---you can't phase through anything," Sun-Moon-and-Stars growled darkly. "You have to get rid of the Lurker; it's not going to give up easily this time."

"And---just how---am I supposed---to do that?" Danny panted with the effort of flying while carrying a sizable cat. She may have been a ghost, but she was the ghost of a Maine Coon and thus outweighed even some good-sized toy breed dogs. And holding onto her was a lot harder than Danny had thought it would be. Essentially, she was a gel-filled water balloon that radiated a cold, colored mist over his already-cold arms, and getting a grip on her was like trying to clutch a wet bar of soap. He had to re-adjust his grip on her several times before he finally managed to securely cradle her on her back, all the while flying at high speeds and taking her snapped directions.

"You will do that by actually _listening_ to me! You wouldn't be in this mess if you had worn the ring like I told you to!" She snapped at him. She began to flick her ears irritably. "Although I don't know why I expected you to listen to me the first time! I mean, not only are you a horse, but you're a teenage horse, at that! That's why I told you to wear the ring! I thought you might be more inclined to obey a direct order! You're a horse---you only _take_ direct orders! "

"Will you stop calling me a horse? I am not---!" Danny stopped mid-rant and blinked curiously down at one of Sun-Moon-and-Stars's exposed forepaws. "You have seven toes on your foot."

"As a point of fact, I have seven toes on all four of my feet," Sun-Moon-and-Stars growled. "And true to your equine nature, you have picked a _spectacularly _bad time to notice! _Fly faster, already_!" As subtle encouragement, she dug several of her needle-like claws into his arms.

Danny put on an extra burst of speed, but it was difficult to keep it up in his current state. He kept slowing down, getting another burst of energy and speeding up, then slowing down again.

"Come on, Danny," Sun-Moon-and-Stars said encouragingly. "Just go down this hallway and turn left." Too tired to question where she was leading him, Danny obediently followed her directions.

Sun-Moon-and-Stars had led him to the stairwell. Good---he knew how to get out of the hotel from here. He started to fly down to get to the maintenance area and out the broken door, but Sun-Moon-and-Stars's claws pricking his arms stopped him. "Go up to the third floor," she said. "We can get into the catwalks in the backstage of the theater that way."

"Backstage?" Danny asked as he reluctantly followed the cat's orders. "Why are we---"

"There's a giant mirror hanging in the wings," Sun-Moon-and-Stars said crisply. "You can use that."

Danny was tired and cranky and frankly he just wasn't in the mood to play 'guess at what Sun-Moon-and-Stars is thinking', especially since it seemed to be a game he was particularly bad at. "Oh, what? I can help the Lurker do his hair or something?"

"Danny," Sun-Moon-and Stars sighed in frustration. "Listen. _Carefully_." She paused to make sure she had his attention. Seeing that she did, she continued. "The Lurker is a _shadow_ creature. You can shot blasts of _light_ from your hands. Mirrors _reflect_ light." She gave him a 'get it now?' look. "Do I really have to go much further?"

Happily for Danny, his mind was alert enough to play connect the dots with the cat's hints. "I think I see what you're getting at," he said as he flew towards the third floor door. "Which way do I go?"

"Take a right through the doorway and go straight down the hall." Sun-Moon-and-Stars glanced below them. "_Sprint_!"

Danny bolted through the third floor door, barely managing to miss being grabbed by the inky black tentacles that were pursuing them. "I can't keep outrunning this thing!" Danny gasped.

"Normally, you wouldn't be able to," the ghost cat told him. "But we're lucky; the Lurker is too large to fit easily through the hallways, so it has to stretch itself out like a worm to chase us. That's why we've been taking so many turns---it has to slow down to catch up with itself."

Danny's tired brain couldn't tell if this made sense, but since the Lurker hadn't been able to catch them yet he decided to assume Sun-Moon-and-Stars was right.

"Go through the door on the right, here," the cat said. Danny went through the door on the right.

The catwalks in the backstage of the theater were in significantly better shape than the ones down in the basement; coated in cobwebs and dust, they at least looked as if they could support his weight. Landing on a catwalk just above center stage, Danny knelt down and gazed into the riggings. "Where's the mirror?"

"Back there." Sun-Moon-and-Stars reached a paw out towards the back of the theater. "If you shoot a blast down at an angle, you might avoid blinding yourself. To be safe, though, close your eyes just before you shoot."

Seeing a tentacle slide through the doorway he'd just flown through, Danny nodded determinedly. "Right," he said, hoisting Sun-Moon-and-Stars onto one shoulder and gathering energy into his free hand.

Sun-Moon-and-Stars's tail bat against his hand. "Wait until most of it gets here before you do anything; we might as well do as much damage as we can." Feeling Danny shift his weight uneasily, she began to purr in his ear to calm him. "I'll tell you when to shoot. Just stay still and try to relax."

Danny tried to take her advice, but it was difficult to keep his head when he could see more and more inky black pouring through the doorway, and what seemed like hundreds upon hundreds of tentacles reaching out, reaching out towards him---!

"You're all right," Sun-Moon-and-Stars voice was warbling with her purr. "You're all right. They won't get you. Just wait a little longer."

"They're coming towards me," Danny whispered anxiously.

"Yes, but they won't get you. Just relax and wait."

Sun-Moon-and-Stars could feel Danny's breathing becoming more stressed, more labored. Inwardly she frowned---the harder he breathed, the more likely he'd start hyperventilating, which would just lead to an out-and-out panic attack. She knew Danny wasn't prone to them---she'd done several readings on him before he'd even arrived; ever since she'd been told about him, really---but in his current state of exhaustion and involuntary starvation, anything was possible. She had to calm him down _now_. And right now, only one thing would do that. The timing wasn't all that convenient, but Danny's sanity was more important than getting rid of a monster.

"Aim down and back," she told him. "Close your eyes before you shoot."

Danny's fist was shaking as he aimed towards the back of the theater. "Now?"

"Your eyes aren't closed," Sun-Moon-and Stars said sternly as she gazed at his profile from her vantage point on his shoulder. Watching him close his eyes, she said casually, "Now."

Danny shot out a plasma blast directly into the mirror. The skin behind his eyelids suddenly turned white, and air suddenly began to rush around him. He could barely hear Sun-Moon-and-Stars purring above the roaring wind.

He stayed kneeling on the catwalk, remaining perfectly still, hoping the trick had worked and terrified that it hadn't, waiting, waiting.

Sun-Moon-and-Stars's purring slowly became louder as the wind died down, and finally she rumbled, "It's all right---you can open your eyes now."

Danny slowly opened his eyes and blinked repeatedly when all he saw were stars. As his vision returned, he was relieved to see the only darkness in the backstage was the natural shadows from the riggings and the curtains. The sickening inky-black mass that was the Lurker was gone.

Danny laughed euphorically. He'd done it! He'd driven off the Lurker! And if the Lurker could be beaten, maybe---just maybe---the Riley-Bijou Wych could be too! Happily, Danny sighed in relief.

Sun-Moon-and-Stars shifted against him, her long tail tapping coolly against his ribs. "I wouldn't relax just yet, Danny," she said mildly.

Danny frowned as he felt his nose start to twitch with that strange cold-wind feeling that had been raking his sinuses off and on for the past day and a half. Lifting the ghost cat out in front of him to regard her face-to-face, he asked, "What do you mean?"

"She means me," a voice spoke up from beside him, at the end of the catwalk.

Startled, Danny whirled around defensively, ready for anything…except for finding himself face-to-face with---"_Caleb_!"

Caleb's gray-green eyes flashed sharply as he fixed Danny with a stern look. "Care to explain?"

"I---I don't know what really happened; I---" Danny froze as he suddenly remembered that he was still in his ghost form.

And Caleb knew it was him.

Uh-oh.

Hurriedly, Danny tried to backtrack. "Uh…er…explain what? Who're you?"

"That's it, Danny," Sun-Moon-and-Stars drawled, her voice dripping with disgust. "Jump in a hole and proceed to dig."

Caleb raised an unamused eyebrow. "Danny, you said my name less than ten seconds ago. Ya wanna give me a _little_ credit and try again?"

"Uh…uh…"Danny was floored. He had _no clue_ what to do or say that might make this moment any less frighteningly awkward.

"Go easy on him, Dog," Sun-Moon-and-Stars said to Caleb as she squirmed and jumped out of Danny's arms. "The horse is usually reasonably bright, but he's had a couple of rough days."

"I'll keep that in mind." Caleb gave her a friendly wave. "Stay out of trouble, now."

"No promises; I am a cat, after all." And with that, Sun-Moon-and-Stars dissolved into a glittering mist and disappeared.

Danny leapt into the air and bolted up into a far corner, to put as much distance between himself and Caleb as possible. "Now, before you totally freak out and jump to the wrong conclusions---"

"Before _I_ freak out and jump to the wrong conclusions?" Even from the distance, Danny could see Caleb smirk in amusement.

"---let me just tell you that I'm not a bad ghost kid like they all say I am and that I know I probably should have been more up front with all this but only Jazz and my two best friends know and I'd really really appreciate it if you'd keep this to yourself and not pull out some sort of Ward family version of the Fenton Thermos or the Fenton Bazooka and---" Danny trailed off when he suddenly realized that Caleb was laughing brightly.

"You really are that paranoid, aren't you?" Caleb chuckled, but with an odd undertone that Danny thought might've been understanding. Caleb wiped at his eyes and smiled as he shook his head. "C'mon, Danny. Do you really think Sun-Moon-and-Stars---who, of all things, specializes in predicting the future---would've left you alone with me if she thought I'd try to hurt you?"

"That---"Danny began to say something in his defense, but Caleb's words struck a chord, "--- is a really good point." Cautiously floating down to Caleb's side and switching back into his human form, Danny quietly asked the older boy, "How long have you known?"

"Since the moment I first saw you," Caleb said.

"What?" Danny yelped, stepping back in surprise. "_How_?"

"How?" Caleb gave a good-natured laugh. "Danny, do yourself a favor and think about it for a minute."

Danny's mind raced in confusion. How? How could Caleb have known he was half-ghost from first sight? He hadn't done anything at the truck stop that had made him seem like anything other than a normal human; he knew he hadn't. In fact, the only thing out-of-the-ordinary that had happened at the truck stop was that that was the first time he'd felt that strange cold-wind-raking-his-sinuses feeling in his nose---

Wait.

_Wait._

Danny's eyes widened as the pieces finally fell into place.

As if to confirm it, Caleb drew his arm up and flicked his wrist. A spark of pale green flame ignited at his fingertips and swirled lazily around his hand before flickering from existence.

Danny couldn't believe it. "You're part ghost, too."

Caleb nodded. "I'm a little surprised you didn't figure it out before," here he gingerly grasped Danny's hand and held his marked, bleeding wrist up to a thin ray of moonlight, "But then, you seem to have had a more pressing concern on your mind. We might want to get this cleaned up before it heals itself; I don't even want to think about what a ghost cat's mouth might be swimming with." Dropping Danny's wrist, Caleb draped an arm around Danny's shoulders and began to lead him out of the Riley-Bijou. "And while we're doing that, care to tell me a story?"

Danny lightly touched his injured wrist, uncertain. "Which version? The long one, or will the short one do?"

Caleb chuckled. "Let's see how long it takes us to patch you up and go from there, all right?"

-------------------------------------------------

_To be continued…_


End file.
